| Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory | |||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 展拓香港界址專條 | ||||||||||
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The Convention Between Great Britain and China Respecting an Extension of Hong Kong Territory or the Second Convention of Peking was a lease signed between Qing Dynasty and the United Kingdom in 1898.
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The convention was signed on 9 June 1898 in Beijing.[2] The contract was signed to give the British full jurisdiction of the newly acquired land that was necessary to ensure proper military defence of the colony around the island.[3] Some of the earliest proposal for the land usage in 1894 included cemetery space, exercise ground for British troops and land for development. Security and land defense remained the top priority for the contract.[2]
Under the convention the territories north of what is now Boundary Street and south of the Sham Chun River, and the surrounding islands, later known as the "New Territories" were leased to the United Kingdom for 99 years rent-free[1], expiring on 30 June 1997, and became part of the crown colony of Hong Kong.[3]
Some of the land under the convention remains rural and it is home to virtually all of Hong Kong's remaining farmland. However, as the downtown districts have become increasingly crowded the government has developed urban areas since the 1950s. Particularly, the areas closest to Kowloon have become integrated in Kowloon districts and are no longer administratively included in the New Territories. Due to continuing population growth and crowdedness in the inner city, the New Territories satellite cities grew increasingly important to the point where a slight majority of the population now lives there.
This made it unfeasible to return the leased land alone as it would have split Hong Kong in two parts. The Chinese also started to pressure the British to return all of Hong Kong, taking the position that they would not accept so-called "unequal treaties" that were imposed on them by colonial powers.
The governments of the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China (PRC) concluded the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, under which the sovereignty of the leased territories, together with Hong Kong Island and Kowloon (south of Boundary Street) ceded under the Treaty of Nanking (1842) and Convention of Peking (1860), was scheduled to be transferred to the PRC on 1 July 1997.[3] The territory was then transferred as scheduled.