Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Liu Xiaoming, holds a virtual news conference on the national security law in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Earlier, Liu has urged the UK to respect China’s core interests regarding the enactment of national security legislation in the city. He said the national security law is necessary, imperative and pressing. Liu also said the law would fix legal loopholes, as it has been held in abeyance since 1997.
In This Story: Hong Kong
Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR), is a metropolitan area and special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta of the South China Sea. With over 7.5 million residents of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world.
Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The whole territory was transferred to China in 1997. As a special administrative region, Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of “one country, two systems”.
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In This Story: United Kingdom
The capital is London. The present monarch is Queen Elizabeth II.
The United Kingdom is the seat of the formerly extensive British Empire.