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
Hong Kong independence Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek initially intended to take back the territory, Britain resumed control of Hong Kong in 1945 after the Second World War, in which Hong Kong was occupied by Japan for three years and eight months. There were few advocates for decolonisation of Hong Kong from the British rule during the post-war period, notably Ma Man-fai and the Democratic Self-Government Party of Hong Kong in the 1960s but the fruitless movement ceased to exist without substantial support. In the last years of the 1970s into the early 1980s, the question of Hong Kong sovereignty emerged on Hong