In the latest evidence of growing tension between Britain and China the foreign secretary Dominic Raab has confirmed that the UK is suspending its extradition treaty with Hong Kong.
It’s in response to Beijing’s imposition of a new security law aimed at ending political protests in Hong Kong.
The UK has already offered residency rights to 3 million Hong Kong citizens but China has accused the UK of “brutal meddling” in its internal affairs.
In Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigners who fought against the introduction of the security law say they’re being pursued by the Chinese authorities.
Huw Edwards presents BBC News at Ten reporting from Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg and from Danny Vincent in Hong Kong.
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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”.
