Actually TT you didn't--- you said "whether" the chinese own HK. That implies an argument over ownership. There isn't one. HK is part of China.
What I wrote:
Hong Kong and China are not the same country, regardless of whether Hong Kong Island is owned by China.
This implies the reasoning of both China and HK as having distinguished themselves separately by government, language, history, social mores and influence. Regardless of whether China owns HK. There was no argument implied as to ownership of the Island by Mainland China. Talk to any HK resident and they will distinguish themselves as separate from Mainland China and its communism. Most will say they will never accept communist rule, and I doubt seriously China will send their army to HK to enforce communism as the rule.
Many countries have areas where the inhabitants speak a different language, not just a different form of the same one. Think of India, Belgium, Switzerland, the UK---and so on, and there are plenty of countries where one part is much more 'couth' than other parts!
I will not argue that fact. However my experience in HK will still not accept your implied idea that HK and China are one in the same country. HK residents are not allowed in Mainland China without passing inspection and receiving a passport approved visa. In other words there is a border between the two that no Chinese or HK resident can cross without inspection and approval in either direction.
What will influence us all, and which you have not addressed, is the effect of the millions and millions of Chinese who still live at sub-standard levels becoming eager consumers. I think this would cushion China from some of the effects of a world wide recession (which has not happened yet. Some countries are, for various reasons, still OK.
Excuse me? What affects us all is the push to bring industrialization and economic pressure on civilizations that were self sustaining until the Government took their land from them and their farming lifestyle because they thought it convenient to build factories and employ the farmers in their factories.
Eager to become consumers? What are you nuts?
Eager to become brainwashed and sucked into consumerism by materialists who wish to change the lifestyles of independent poeples so they become dependent on manufactured goods and corporate farming?
You really live a sheltered life. Where do you get all of your information? Television and Newspapers? Yahoo?
What about all of the displaced and impoverished consumers who
were the factory workers of the USA, and who lost their jobs because corporations decided to move their factories to Mainland China to avoid taxes that paid for systems to prevent pollution and toxic wastes being spewed about in the U.S.? China has less of a concern for the waste products dumped in the rivers where the factories were built as well as the clouds of toxins spewed into the air. China as a government has no love for the world outside of China, and no love for its own people. It is bought and paid for like most of the worlds Governments.
