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Is Hong Kong A Country?

To many people, Hong Kong is a famous and very interesting place. However, is Hong Kong a country? This question puzzles quite some people. Let me try to answer this very common question about Hong Kong.

The short answer is: No, Hong Kong is not a country. It's a special administrative region (SAR) of China.

But why do people think Hong Kong it's a country? Well, there are some historical reasons for that. Hong Kong had been part of China for a couple of thousand years before it became a colony of the United Kingdom in the 1800s. Since then, Hong Kong was ruled by the United Kindom for over 100 years, until it was officially returned to China in 1997.

Ever since its return to China, Hong Kong has been a special administrative region of China. The Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously formulated the "One country, two systems" principle in the 1980s. According to this principle, although Hong Kong is not a country but a region of China, it retains some administrative and economic systems that are different from the mainland China.

For example, Hong Kong enjoys a limited form of self-government. There are local elections in Hong Kong to select the Chief Executive. Also, Hong Kong's legal system is quite different from the one in Mainland China. Actually, It's more similar to the British system.

While Renminbi is the main currency in Mainland China, Hong Kong people use the Hong Kong Dollar as the official currency. And the Hong Kong passport is different from the Chines passport. The visa requirements for entering Hong Kong and Mainland China are also different.

In term of the language, Chinese Mandarin (Pu Tong Hua) is the official language of Mainland China, but Cantonese and English are official languages for Hong Kong. Also, while Mainland Chinese use the simplified Chinese characters, Hong Kong people use the traditional Chinese characters.

In summary, the answer to the question of "Is Hong Kong a country?" is no. Hong Kong is part of China, but it's a special region and there're quite some differences between Hong Kong and Mainland China. Hope this article can help you have a better understanding of Hong Kong. You can visit the website HongKongScape.com for more guides and resources about Hong Kong.