The guy has a UK passport and rightfully be granted TWOV entry.

This scenario is again telling you that while NIA letters of the law remain unchanged but in all practical purposes, the law is not enforced. And that is ALL that matters, not what you believe, which by the way, remains 100% correct. Still it does not changed the fact that is the officials at the border dont look into what NIA says anymore.

Besides, if there are negative DPs as you constantly remind us what NIA could do, we would have read about it many such sob stories as predicted by you, all over net from English to Chinese and on social media such as XHS etc. The fact remains that we have not read about such since 2025. What does that tell you?

Like I mentioned earlier the officials now dont even ask previous mainlanders to return to their old residence locale to "Close/Cancel" their residence registration. Such incidents happened sporadically in 2024 and early 2025. Not seeing such DPs for like a year by now. Meanwhile the legal requirement remains unchanged, yet not enforced (honestly it is really a very stupid requirement especially many did not even know where their previous registrations were held!)

It just seem NIA's stuff is more about "Face" while what the government wants now, is to attract as many visitors to come spend money as it can. a much more practical thing they care about now.