After Hong Kong reverted to China in 1997, a new heading was created (Hong Kong (China)). This heading was being used for Hong Kong as a whole until May 2002 when it was changed to Hong Kong (China : Special Administrative Region) because it was discovered that the city of Victoria had changed its name to Hong Kong in 1997. Since it appeared that the later heading for Victoria (China) would be Hong Kong (China), it was necessary to add Special Administrative Region to the qualifier for the heading for Hong Kong as a whole in order to resolve the conflict between the headings for the city of Hong Kong and for Hong Kong as a whole. In July 2002, however, the Foreign Names Committee of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names determined that the city of Hong Kong is historical only. As a result of this determination, the Library of Congress has changed the heading Hong Kong (China : Special Administrative Region) back to the form Hong Kong (China). The historical city of Hong Kong has been established as Hong Kong (Hong Kong).
In descriptive cataloging practice, all former and current headings are valid, depending upon the usage in the item being cataloged. Subject cataloging practice is described in the Subject Cataloging Manual: Subject Headings, H 978, Hong Kong (China).
The official languages of Hong Kong remain Chinese and English. Because there is uncertainty about English remaining an official language, all government bodies of Hong Kong (China) will be established provisionally (008/33 = value c ). If the item being cataloged shows the government body's name in Chinese only, establish the body in Chinese and code the name authority record provisional. If the item being cataloged shows the government body's name in English, establish the body in English and code the record provisional. If the item being cataloged shows the body's name in both Chinese and English, establish the body in English (according to AACR2 24.3A1) and code the record provisional. Do not revise a provisional heading for a government body established in either Chinese or English if the form in the other language becomes available later.
The MARC country code for Hong Kong (hk) is no longer valid and will be deleted from the code list. The appropriate fixed field in bibliographic records should now be coded for China (cc).
The geographic area code for Hong Kong was changed from a-hk to a-cc-hk.
In the Library of Congress Classification, in those cases where specific numbers have been established for Hong Kong, the numbers will for the most part continue to be used. See references to these numbers have been made from the corresponding numbers for China.
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