Hong Kong packed 7.5 million onto 1,114 square kilometres
China's southern special administrative region—Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories—holds about 7.5 million people on roughly 1,114 square kilometres. That density ranks fourth worldwide, while the skyline holds more skyscrapers than any other region on Earth. Britain governed it for a century and a half before handing it back.
Britain took Hong Kong Island after the First Opium War (cession 1841–1842), added Kowloon in 1860, and leased the New Territories for ninety-nine years in 1898. Fishing and farming villages became a global finance hub now ranked third after New York and London, ninth among exporters and eighth among importers, with the Hong Kong dollar the world's ninth-most traded currency. Relentless demand for housing has made its homes the costliest residential property market anywhere. HDI about 0.955 places it eighth worldwide and alone in Asia's top ten.
Romanisation as He-Ong-Kong appeared by 1780 for an Aberdeen-area inlet; the two-word form Hong Kong became official in 1926, though early firms kept Hongkong. Archaeology suggests Paleolithic traces possibly 35,000–39,000 years old at Wong Tei Tung and widespread Middle Neolithic settlement about 6,000 years ago. Qin incorporation came in 214 BCE after campaigns against the Baiyue; Portuguese Jorge Álvares visited in 1513. Qing coastal clearances from 1661 to 1683 emptied much of the later territory under Haijin rules.
Lin Zexu's 1839 opium crackdown triggered the war that opened colonial rule. The University of Hong Kong was founded in 1911. After World War II, refugees fleeing civil war and the 1949 mainland revolution swelled the population, and in the 1950s the colony became the first of the Four Asian Tigers to industrialise. The 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration set the handover, and the flag changed as 1 July 1997 began, ending 156 years of colonial government; more than half a million residents emigrated between 1987 and 1996. GaWC rates the city Alpha+, public transport carries more than 90 percent of trips, and its people outlive everyone else on Earth.
Source: Hong Kong
