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DSR 11C
ultimate Chinese sovereignty over the New Territories should
this not present serious legal difficulties if they could be
treated in isolation.
However, administratively the Territory
of Hong Kong constitutes a single unit and, in any case,
the
Chinese (who maintain that all the Treaties were unequal' and
thus that all the areas in question are equally Chinese would
no doubt require a declaration covering the whole Territory.
15. A declaration recognising residual Chinese sovereignty
over Hong Kong Island and Kowloon would derogate from the
1
cession of the areas concerned under the Treaty of 1842 and
the Convention of 1860. Such a change could, of course, be
made through a new Treaty but the Chinese are unlikely to
agree to that. The case of Macao provides only a partial
analogy. The Treaty of 1887 did not formally cede that
Territory to Portugal. It placed it under 'perpetual
occupation and government by Portugal, as any other Port-
uguese possession'; but by an additional Article Portugal
undertook 'never to alienate Macao without previous agree-
ment with China'. This clearly implied a limitation on
absolute Portuguese sovereignty and probably facilitated
a confidential understanding believed to have been concluded
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