Not many people ever raised this issue, but the facts are like that.

Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain by the Qing Dynasty in 1842, which meant that it belonged to Britain indefinitely.

The New Territories and Kowloon peninsula were leased to Britain by the Qing Dynasty in 1898 for a total of ninety-nine years.

Therefore, when Hong Kong was returned to China, it should have only been the New territories and the peninsula of Kowloon.

If you keep on, your question and my answer will be banned from this website.

It has it's own legal system and internal rule (and citizenship) but is externally represented by China. Essentially a protectorate or self-governing dependency but they are very "sensitive" about those terms and have some bloated special description that escapes my mind.

It's land belongs to China, it's politcal system is not to be touched. Sorry mate, find a different topic.

For now....

Funny thing is even on the echinacities website they have a section where we can vote for the best city in China, of course I was going to vote for China... Guess which city isn't listed! Neither is Macao or Taipei! What gives are these cities not good enough to make the grade with echinacities or is it being implied they aren't apart of China, call me confused?

It's kind of like how Puerto Rico and the US are. Hong Kong's foreign policy is pretty much controlled by the PRC but they conduct their own internal affairs. And there were thousands of Hong Kongers protesting in the streets when it was returned to Chinese control. Little by little it is becoming more and more like the mainland. That's not necessarily a good thing.

I keep it real!

Yes it technically belongs to China. But because it was ruled but the British, it seems like a completely different place. It's the whole "one party, two systems" thing that the government always talks about. It's interesting though, because for flights and stuff, HK is considered international.

Hong Kong belonged to England (not 'the British' which includes Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). I make that definition based on the fact that people often refer to the English empire and British or UK, all referring essentially to England and not England and it's neighbouring territories.

It was returned to China but with imposed conditions. China cannot change anything in Hong Kong for 50 years after the changing of hands. That is why it is self governed and has different law.

In 2047 it will become 100% Chinese.
It will be interesting to see how China deals with Hong Kong when the time comes.

"In accordance with the One Country, Two Systems principle agreed between the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China, the socialist system of People's Republic of China would not be practiced in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and Hong Kong's previous capitalist system and its way of life would remain unchanged for a period of 50 years. The Joint Declaration provides that these basic policies shall be stipulated in the Hong Kong Basic Law."

OFCOURSE NO DOUBT ABOUT IT HONGKONG IS THE INTEGRAL PART OF CHINA & TIWAN AS WELL.

"It was returned to China but with imposed conditions. China cannot change anything in Hong Kong for 50 years after the changing of hands. That is why it is self governed and has different law."

Those conditions weren't imposed by the UK. Deng XIaoping wanted it that way.

http://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/2018/08/29/woman-claims-marriage-scam-tricked-her-into-marrying-complete-stranger-during-mock-wedding.html?intcmp=ob_article_footer_text&intcmp=obnetwork

If the mainland is so great why would you deceive to marry some one from hong kong to live there.

hong Kong was "returned" to China in 1997, however, the chinese have left the inperialist system entact, for whatever insane reason. prior to 97, deng agreed to allow inperialists to continue doing whatever the hell they wanted in hk. the tradition continues til this day.

china has shown little interest in integrating hk to china. perhaps china is waiting for estonia style riots to take place. the result is, westerners have huge amounts of pull in hk. it's not uncommon to see westerners in hk break all the laws, and thumb their noses at the cops. westerners usually just get a slap on the wrist, which isn't much different from the era of british ocupation.

another thing we have to keep in mind is, alot of the hk ruling class are leftovers from british inperialism. i'd say most of them were servants to the british prior to 97. this is why they are loyal to the west, as opposed to china. it's pretty much the same thing as south korea, where the south korean ruling class were left overs from japanese inperialism. these hk uncle toms were never purged from power after 97, and were even rewarded, therefore continued to project western interests in the city. after 21 yrs, the central gov has largely been unable, or unwilling to check these compradores, leading to a growing divide between hk/mainland.

not only that, westerners arguably have more influence in media, education, law, and the hk market than the chinese themselves do. one good example is how the main instigators of ocupy central were given light sentences. this could be because the majority of judges in hk are foreigners, all from inperialist countries like australia, and britain. for those who dont know, ocupy central was a western backed riot/destabilization operation that lasted a couple of years. it was kind of like occupy wall street, except ocupy central was orchestrated by western intel ajencies to put presure on beijing.

one can argue that hk is just one giant cash cow for western korporations. believe it or lot, alot of chinese products are actually banned from hk, while westerners can pretty much import whatever the hell they want into the defacto colony. for example, hongers find themselves buying iphones, and samsungs rather than xiaomi, or meizu. they will buy nikes, and reebooks instead of lining, and anta. you get the idea. ironically, this ends up giving more money to the inperialists to fund more destabilization operations in hk, and the rest of china, leading to a vicious cycle.

the hk internet too is largely controled by the west, therefore the ideas they have, and information they have access to are spoon fed to them by their western masters. needless to say, the information coming from sites such as google are guaranteed to be pro western, and anti chinese. instead of using baidu, weixin, and weibo, hongers are using twiter, facebook, and whatsap. the domination of western sites, and programs allows the west to steer hongers in a pro western/anti chinese direction. practically speaking, one can easily argue that hk is in the hands of the west.