China has existed for thousands of years as a rough idea and not as a continuous country for all that time. For many hundreds of years it was a set of countries

China has existed for thousands of years as a rough idea and not as a continuous country for all that time. For many hundreds of years it was a set of countries like Europe and for others it was a single entity. So to say that China has always been a single continuous entity for thousands of years is kind of pure propaganda. Also when the British took Hong Kong it was only an island with some small fishing and charcoal making villages. Not the same as the huge metropolis it is today. So it exists today because of people going there and building the place up. My guess is because it wasn't part of communist China proper so you could do and say things that you couldn't on the mainland.