To Slapshot
The issue of nationality is different from that of "permanent residence". Some countries (USA, Canada?, Australia?) automatically give their nationality to anyone who was born there.
Some others (the UK, Germany, France for example) do not.
As a general rule, and without wishing to initiate a racist slanging match, it seems to me that the countries still run/primarily populated by the "native" race do not automatically give nationality through birth, whereas those run/primarily populated by a relatively recent (say within the last 500 years) immigrant race do.
The person who said "she cannot be Chinese - she is white" was out of touch with the trend in HK (though things have moved on a lot since 1999). There are now many ethnic Indians (who are perhaps fourth generation immigrants) who have HK/Chinese nationality and a few caucasians.