Four political entities have a special position recognized by international treaty or agreement (Åland in Finland, Svalbard in Norway, as well as the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau in the People's Republic of China).

Entities on the list

People's Republic of China

• Hong Kong: special administrative region; after the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong was signed on December 19, 1984, the sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred to the PRC on July 1, 1997. It is now largely autonomous operating under the Basic Law of Hong Kong.
• Macau (officially Macao): special administrative region; after the Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration on the Question of Macau was signed in 1987, the sovereignty of Macau was transferred to the PRC on December 20, 1999. It is now largely autonomous operating under the Basic Law of Macau.

Note: While the status of Hong Kong and Macau possesses characteristics of dependent territories, some people may not consider them as such as they are not external territories but "inalienable part^* of the People's Republic of China", and are not explicitly stated to be dependent territories officially.

Finland

• Åland: neutral and demilitarised autonomous region of Finland. It was demilitarised by the Treaty of Paris in 1856, which was later affirmed by the League of Nations in 1921, and in a somewhat different context reaffirmed in the treaty on Finland's admission to the European Union in 1995.

Norway

• Svalbard: Territory of Norway; administered by the Polar Department of the Ministry of Justice, through a governor (sysselmann) residing in Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen; by treaty (9 February 1920) sovereignty was awarded to Norway.

See also

• List of countries
• List of sovereign states
• List of subnational entities
• List of dependent territories
• List of non-independent areas such as disputed or occupied territories
• List of unrecognized countries
• Dependent territories in the European Union
• Kosovo, de jure part of Serbia, currently a UN protectorate.
• Sovereign Military Order of Malta

Lists of subnational entities | Special territories | Lists of countries