Hong Kong government granted US consulate a rare 999-year lease in the 1990s | Hacker News Reader

Hong Kong government granted US consulate a rare 999-year lease in the 1990s

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29 pointsdosy26 comments

It came to mind that Hong Kong was “leased” for 99 years too.

Yes. And it was given back at the end of that period.

It's a bit weird to lease a city but it worked out fine.

The New Territories were leased for 99 years in the 1898 Second Convention of Peking. Hong Kong Island was ceded in perpetuity in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. Kowloon, except for the walled city, and Stonecutter's Island, were ceded in perpetuity in the 1860 Convention of Peking, Article 6.

> Kowloon, except for the walled city

I thought Kowloon was the walled city.

Nope. The Opium wars and the subsequent status of the Kowloon Walled City are really cool stories. Funny to think that the fortunes of today's Hong Kong got rich selling drug.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City

They were like, damn turns out 99 years isn't eternity after all. Well - just add another 9 to this contract and we'll be good to go.

It's purely symbolic. A lease is still a contract between 2 parties. If one or both cease to exist so goes the lease.

That may not always be the case. It's not like Castro was a big fan of Guantanamo Bay...

Great point. The final arbitrator of all contracts is the threat of violence. If you can't back it up, it doesn't matter what the contract says.

Also the Mexican land grants in California. The US still respects the terms of those agreements.

Eminent domain exists and is frequently used in China (as in the US). Do the terms of this lease somehow exempt the US consulate from it?

They are saying that the nature of the party (global superpower) is the final exemption criteria for every kind of obligation if you play that card.

My god. It's an actual, blatant violation of the Rule Against Perpetuities. [0] And here I thought I'd never use this knowledge outside of a Property Law exam.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities

Very interesting. But can lifetime be measured on “corporate persons”? Like a company , or org

That's some confidence.

What's the likelihood that China or the US will be around in 999 years?

> What's the likelihood that China or the US will be around in 999 years?

What's more relevant is what is the chance that each will either be around or have a successor in in interest around in 999 years; the likelihood of the latter are much higher.

(Of course, it's also less confidence than acquiring freehold title—an option the US had under the original lease—which assumes that the granting authority or one upholding it's decisions will exist forever. People do that with land all the time.)

The Lindy Effect predicts that their future life expectancies are proportional to their current ages. Although the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, China has been around in one form or another since 1600BC. The USA has only been around since 1776 (or 1783).

People existed in the American landmass before 1776 too. ;)

In fairness, most of those were Native Americans. Most of those nations are already, effectively, gone.

China? like 97% US 38.5%

The China figure looks about right, but for the US it’s an infinitesimal we can just call 0%. The US is going to fragment much like the Roman Empire did and for much the same reasons.

China was nearly crushed by the Mongols but absorbed the invaders into their society and rose again to great heights.

The Roman Empire cracked under the pressure of mass migrations of well-armed peoples forced to move West by climatic shifts.

Perhaps there is a lesson there.

The Visigothic refugees weren’t well armed, and they were fleeing Huns not climate change. It was their children who served in the Legions who then sacked Rome.

Otherwise I agree.

There is some discussion of the migration of the steppe nomads being due to some extent to climate issues.

Sorry that this is the best citation I can find:

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/10/30/16568716/six-way...

"Tree rings suggest that a megadrought in the middle of the fourth century might have made these nomads desperate for greener pastures. As they migrated West, they terrified the highly developed kingdoms, such as those of the Goths, that had long existed along Rome’s frontier. Partly because of this climate-caused upheaval, the Goths challenged Rome’s frontiers as never before. Rome’s Western territories ended up being carved up and reconfigured as Germanic kingdoms."

The Roman Climatic Optimum is the name of a warm period from roughly 250 BC to AD 400. It wouldn't be a stretch to hypothesize that the fading of that warm period may also have had effects on the steppes, leading to the migrations.

The Visigoths may have been fleeing the Huns, but why were the Huns on the move in the first place?

Droughts aren't really climate change, they are a normal part of the weather patterns in a climate zone. "Droughts becoming more severe or frequent" could be construed as climate change. Or it could just be mean reversion. Doubtless major climactic events have caused migrations. Desertification has many well attested examples.

There are remarkable parallels between the two, it could be argued. There is something of a myth of Chinese continuity which isn't really warranted at face value when you examine the history more closely. Likewise, there is another myth that one day there was a Roman Empire, and the next day Romulus Augustus was deposed and suddenly Europe was cloaked in darkness, and the legacy of Rome extinguished completely. Real events are considerably more muddy and don't necessarily conform nicely to narratives.

The Tang dynasty, like the Roman Empire, splintered in internal divisions and revolts, leaving behind a rump state that preserved elements of the previous structure, as well as a plethora of semi-"barbarian" successor states controlling portions of the former extents that had their own synergies of "Chinese" and non-Han properties, which one can squint at and see similar reflections of in the Germanic Roman successor states and the Eastern/Byzantine Empire. When Genghis rode into the gates of Zhongdu (Beijing), he had driven out the Jin, who were originally Jurchens from Manchuria, who had in turn displaced the Liao dynasty, who where originally Khitans from Mongolia, who had in their turn taken over when the Tang dynasty fell to pieces. Then his grandson completed the conquest and wiped out the Song dynasty that had remained in control of the southern portion of the old empire. Imagine Charlemagne being coronated Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, and then rather than his grandsons dividing his empire between them in civil war, one had proved powerful enough to maintain control, and then turned and captured Byzantium and the rest of the former Eastern Empire.

China 71.67%

US 13.53%

People's Republic 0%

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