ABSTRACT
What the Chinese government called the “Hong Kong question” (xianggang wenti) was one of the most important national reunification problems in modern China. The Hong Kong question refers to a historical problem of British occupation of Hong Kong in the second half of the nineteenth century. The British gradually occupied the Hong Kong territories through three treaties. First, after the first Opium War (1840-1842), the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) ceded Britain Hong Kong Island. Next, after the second Opium War (1856-1860), Britain forced the Qing government to sign the Treaty of Beijing (1860), giving Britain the Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island. Finally, Britain leased the New Territories (the area north of Kowloon up to the Shenzhen River as well as 235 islands) through the Extension of the Colony treaty (1898), which granted a ninety-nine-year lease set to expire in 1997. The current geopolitical space called Hong Kong is a product of these three treaties.
