Question

写一篇关于香港的英语作文

Answer 1

Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [pronunciation], is one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the other being Macau. The territory lies on the eastern side of the Pearl River Delta, bordering Guangdong province in the north and facing the South China Sea in the east, west and south. Beginning as a trading port in the 19th century, Hong Kong has developed into a leading financial centre.

Hong Kong was a crown colony of the United Kingdom from 1842 until the transfer of its sovereignty to the People's Republic of China in 1997. The Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law of Hong Kong stipulate that Hong Kong operates with a high degree of autonomy until at least 2047, fifty years after the transfer. Under the policy of "one country, two systems", the Central People's Government is responsible for the territory's defence and foreign affairs, while Hong Kong maintains its own legal system, police force, monetary system, customs policy, immigration policy, and delegates to international organisations and events.

Answer 2

Hong Kong is 98% Chinese. Although the territory's official languages are English and Cantonese, the use of Mandarin (or Putonghua), China's official language, is on the rise. Among the non-Chinese living in Hong Kong, some 150,000 Filipinos make up the largest foreign community; most are women working as maids and nannies (amahs in local parlance), and can be seen socializing in Statue Square on their day off, usually Sunday.

Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. The British owned Hong Kong Island, but the New Territories -- the part of Hong Kong on the mainland -- had been leased from China in 1898. It was the expiration of this 99-year lease that necessitated Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

In hindsight, the handover looks anticlimactic. The rest of the world was always more apprehensive about Chinese rule than were most Hong Kongers, for whom business takes precedence over all other issues. It was the Asian crisis, which hit within a month of the handover, that became the real news of 1997 and the years that followed.

The SAR (Special Administrative Region) government pulled through the crisis, and today it is easy to forget the economy was ever imperiled. The changes wrought by the handover are mostly ones of increasing integration between the local and mainland economies, a process that has been under way for at least two decades.

Perhaps the greatest sign that Hong Kong is operating comfortably under Chinese rule is the fact that political debate has, for the most part, centered on such issues as chickens and pollution rather than the much-feared crackdown on individual liberty. The local press, though subject to some self-censorship, still thrives; international reporting, publishing, and broadcasting continue unabated. And most everyone makes time to check up on the stock market.