Talk:Sino-British Joint Declaration
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[edit] NPOV edits
Removed a phrase implying that Hong Kong's economy has collapsed after 1997. It's gone through a nasty recession, but collapse is an overstatement. Certainly the HK economy has not undergone the chaos that would have happened if there were no joint declaration.
-- Roadrunner
NPOV'ized nature of the agreement. The PRC and the UK have always disagreed as to whether it is a binding international agreement or not.
-- Roadrunner
Remove the following paragraph here:
- The United Kingdom, most Western governments, and many of the legal experts both in the West and in Hong Kong have always taken the position that the Declaration was a binding international agreement. By contrast, the People's Republic of China and most legal experts in Mainland China have always taken the position that the Declaration is not a binding international agreement. This dispute is significant as it impacts the constitutional theory under which the Basic Law of Hong Kong operates.
I cannot recall coming across any commentaries or statements from the PRC or Mainland legal experts which queried the binding nature of the JD. In fact, Chinese leaders regard the agreement as a victory which ended the colonial rule in Hong Kong. In Deng Xiaoping's word (regarding one country two systems), 我們說這個話是算數的. See e.g. [1]
In any case the constitutional authority of the Basic Law is based upon the Chinese constitution (This has been recognized by the HK Court of Final Appeal). This is the legal position for all practical purposes regardless of the status of the JD.
-Hlaw 15:46, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] United Nations Involvement
The UN's involvement makes the Joint Declaration substanially different from any bilateral treaty.--Kaspiann 04:22, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
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- No it doesn't. Under Article 102 of the UN Charter, any international agreement has to be registered with the UN Secretariat in order to be effective under international law.
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- I moved this from the article since this contains some major inaccuracies in implying that treaties aren't normally registered with the United Nations.
Roadrunner 02:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] United Nations Involvement
The Joint Declaration is unlike an agreement made within a state, and the involvement of the UN creates obligations that internationalise the status of Hong Kong. The Joint Declaration is, therefore, not a private agreement between the PRC and the UK, but an international one.
International treaties are concluded between states, not within a state, and are usually not required to be registered with the UN. However, the UN Secretary General could agree to be involved, if invited.
By registering the Joint Declaration with the UN, both the PRC and UK governments acknowledged the need for a neutral third party, and accepted said third party's possible participation by doing so. Otherwise, they could have simply made it a bilateral treaty, which they did not choose to.
[edit] Chinese Characters Flood
Do we really need the title in Traditional Chinese characters and Simplified Chinese characters in the first few lines? They take up so much room and flood the beginning of the article with text unreadable to most people who would see this entry. - House of Cards 02:22, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
- For the Chinese speakers it is easier to correlate this stuff with what they know. Besides there were two copies of this treaty, one in Chinese and one in English so the Chinese name of it is valid information. Leave it there thanks. CW 15:02, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
- This is exactly the problem about Hong Kong-related articles that I have been pointing out for many times. In Hong Kong, both English and Chinese are official languages. So, it makes sense for Chinese name for the subject matter to be included for a Hong Kong-related article. But when "Chinese" is added to the article, what are really added to the article is the Chinese name (and often the abbreviations) of the subject matter written in both Traditional Chinese characters and Simplified Chinese characters. Moreover, Cantonese Chinese is the most common "dialect" spoken in Hong Kong, while Mandarin Chinese is also used, and is the official language of the entire country. It turns out that the pronunciations in both Cantonese and Mandarin are added. But for each of them, several kinds of phonetic symbols (pronunciation guides) are usually added. Finally, the whole bunch of stuffs mentioned above are added to the first sentence of an article, thus creating the so-called "Chinese-character flood". The disadvantage is that the Chinese-language information separates the first sentence (the most important topic sentence) in every article. I have made some suggestions, such as to include only (at most) two kinds of phonetic symbols for Cantonese and Mandarin, or to use a table-like template to present the information aside. But some people always revert my edits, whenever I try to do that to the articles. By the way, the Cantonese pronunciation of the Chinese name has not be added to the article yet. May someone add it some time. Thanks. - Alanmak 18:11, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Handover to ROC?
Was there never any discussion in the UK during or shortly before the handover negotiations about the possibility of handing over Hong Kong to the Republic of China on Taiwan instead of the PRC? LeoO3 13:47, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
- The Brits would not have given any serious thought to the scenario. The recognised government of China was / is the PRC and they hold the seat in the UN. Besides it was not in anyone's interest to hand Hong Kong to the Taiwanese because the mainlander would most likely just invade - forced to invade you can say due to "face" and internal politics. The Brits, the mainlanders and the Taiwanese all had (still have) substantial investments in the territory and they would all be losers. CW 14:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] The "arrogant bitch" comment
"According to some news reports, Deng Xiaoping at one time called Margaret Thatcher "an arrogant bitch" during the handover talks."
Can the author please provide the source? The word "bitch" has no direct translation in Chinese. CW 14:52, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The source was from a BBC documentary about Margaret Thatcher years in Britain made somewhere in 1997 or so. Although Chinese doesnt have the term "bitch", Deng probably used a similar derogatory female term about Thatcher. Also in various sources (especially in his biography), Deng was really angry at her during the meeting. hanchi 23 January 2006
[edit] Removal of wade-giles
The manual of style says that Wade-Giles is "generally unnecessary, except in cases of famous ancient Chinese personalities or literature", so I removed it. The Cantonese romanization should stay, though, since it's an HK-related article. cab 11:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
- Removed again. The infobox for the transcription is already enormous, please don't add long and unnecessary content unless you have a justification (e.g. a reliable source has used the Wade-Giles transcriptfor referring to the Declaration, or it is otherwise commonly known by the Wade-Giles transcription). Thank you. cab 10:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
