The most famous case of a non-Chinese person being granted a HKSAR passport (in 2001?) was Mike Rowse, currently the director of InvestHK and formerly in charge of HK's relaunch campaign after SARS.
Other non-Chinese cases were reported in the press and it was big news at that time (2001-03?). I think they did have to answer some simple questions in Cantonese or Mandarin. I remember that they had to renounce their other (if any) citizenship which would perhaps make getting a HK passport not so attractive for many people.
Lots of people just get permanent ID cards after 7 years residence here.
My children have right of abode and HKSAR passports and Canadian citizenship and passports. They got the HKSAR passport first and then later we applied for the Canadian one. HK Immigration officials have told us that their Canadian passport is just considered a "travel document".
But is a HKSAR passport what you mean by "Chinese naturalization?" Getting Chinese citizenship would be a different process.
Hi
I was very honest about my language skills, I told them I speak conversational cantonese and no mandarin at all. I used to speak to them in english though some cantonese will help. Are you prepared to give up your present nationality? You will have to if you're not chinese.
^ Great information, albeit surprising. It's unfortunate that they do not keep statistics of whether or not applicants are ethnic Chinese as I suspect that 100% of the Indonesians mentioned are.