Hong Kong

Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (shortened as Hong Kong SAR), is a special administrative region on the eastern side of the Pearl River estuary in southern China. With over 7.4 million people of various nationalities[d] in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world.

Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after Qing China ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898.[17][18] The territory was transferred to China in 1997.[19] As a special administrative region, Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of “one country, two systems”. Despite political union with the rest of China, the regional population overwhelmingly identifies as Hongkongers rather than Chinese.

Originally a sparsely populated area of farming and fishing villages,[16] the territory has become one of the world’s most significant financial centres and commercial ports. It is the world’s tenth-largest exporter and ninth-largest importer, and its legal tender (the Hong Kong dollar) is the world’s 13th-most traded currency. Hong Kong hosts the largest concentration of ultra high-net-worth individuals of any city in the world. Although the city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, there is severe income inequality