Hong Kong–United Kingdom relations a deeply important role in the formation of the modern Hong Kong. Sovereignty of Hong Kong was ceded to the UK "in perpetuity" on 29 August 1842 through the Treaty of Nanking. The UK further expanded the territory of Hong Kong in 1860 by another cessation, plus a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The stability, security, and predictability of British law and government enabled Hong Kong to flourish as a centre for international trade. Localisation of teritary institutions, the Hong Kong government and the independent Judiciary in the run-up to the 1997 Handover of sovereignty, caused a
Young Plan (Hong Kong) 1980s during the Sino-British negotiations on Hong Kong's sovereignty. The demand and attempts for constitutional reform in Hong Kong had occurred from time to time, but it had been an intractable problem for the Colonial Government due to the overwhelmingly majority of the Chinese population. Until during the Second World War when Hong Kong was under Japanese occupation, the collapse of the British imperial power in East Asia in the face of Japanese onslaught and also the emergence of a demand form the Chinese Nationalist Government under Chiang Kai-shek for the retrocession of Hong Kong during the war, forced the