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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (146183)	9/22/2004 3:16:44 PM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

GST, Technical matters: Hong Kong was a crown colony, owned by the British in perpetuity (ceded to GB in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking), and expanded to include Kowloon in 1860 under a "perpetual lease" in the Convention of Beijing. However, "New Territories" north of Kowloon peninsula were the subject of a 99-year lease in 1898 primarily for defense purposes. Later, as the population grew it became clear that 6 million people could not exist without the water, etc. from the new territories, and the political world had changed, the entire thing was ceded back to China in July 1997.

To: GST who wrote (146183)	9/28/2004 8:22:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

here is no "might be" about it -- it is part of China. The China that it is part of is not a country. China in that sense is an idea. The country in question is the Peoples Republic of China. Taiwan is not part of this country, that isn't just a matter of minor administrative details. Taiwan is a different country than the People's Republic of China, it isn't a province "breakaway" or "autonomous" or otherwise. A term sometimes used is "nation-state". Taiwan can be reasonably considered to be part of the Chinese nation, but it isn't part (even an "autonomous" part) of the state, called the People's Republic of China. Some peoples/nations don't have a state (Palestinians, Kurds, ect.), others (like China) are in more than one state. The People's Republic of China also has minorities that traditionally have not been part of China (like the native of Tibet). These people are in many ways not part of the Chinese nation, even though they are in the Peoples Republic. When you say there is "one China", you should make it clear whether you are talking about the nation or the state. In some cases a country (the state) has boundaries that are fairly similar to the traditional boundaries of a nation (these boundaries may be vague but history and ethnicity are part of what determines the boundaries). I think the People's Republic often intentionally ignores this distinction. Anything that is historically part of China they consider to be rightfully part of the People's Republic of China. A state using force to "reunite" a traditional nation, is an aggressor, and usually that aggression is not justified IMO. As for Hong Kong, it was indeed "leased" -- now you need to answer the question, who held the lease? I oversimplified. Part of Hong Kong was ceded to the UK. That part was never a part of the People's Republic until recently and wasn't a part of the predecessor governments since 1842. The other part, the "New Territories", was leased, unlike the "crown colony" of Hong Kong or Taiwan for that matter. Tim