Hong
Kong,
an area of 410 square miles on the south coast of China
became part of the British Empire as a
result of the Treaty of Nanking (1842). On the 1st July, 1898, Hong
Kong was leased to Britain for a period
of 99 years.
The
day after Pearl Harbor the Japanese
Army attacked the colony and although British forces provided
valiant resistance they were forced to surrender on 25th December
1941.
British
forces recaptured Hong Kong on 30th August 1945. During the Chinese
Civil War a large number of refugees entered Hong Kong and the
population of the colony increased from one to four and half million
between 1946 and 1949.
Hong Kong
became an increasingly prosperous centre for the manufacturing production
of domestic and electrical goods, international commerce and banking.
In 1984
the British government agreed, in return for guarantees about civil
and economic freedoms, to hand back all of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
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