Among the 33,733 citizens of the United Kingdom living in Hong Kong, 19,405 are of some European ethnicity, 6,893 are Chinese, 2,337 are Indian, 1,047 are Pakistani, 829 are Nepalese, 273 are other Asians, 227 are Filipino, 98 are Thai, 40 are Japanese, and 40 are Indonesian.
If you were born in Hong Kong before July 1997 you might also have a claim to British citizenship or a British Passport if your parent or grandparent was born or adopted or granted nationality in the United Kingdom or a British territory outside Hong Kong before your birth.
A different estimate puts the number of Britons in China (including Hong Kong) at 3,752,031, the majority of which are those in Hong Kong who have continued to possess British nationality, particularly the British nationals (overseas) status, which numbered 3.4 million as of 2007.
Was Hong Kong a colony? Hong Kong was a British colony from 1841 until its handover to Chinese rule in 1997, with the exception of Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945.
As a result of the Chinese Government's imposition of new 'national security' laws and the British Governments policy shift on BN(O) visas, many people are choosing to emigrate to the UK from Hong Kong.
UK nationals can obtain the right of abode, meaning that they will have permanent residency in Hong Kong, if they have lawfully spent at least seven years in the HKSAR, either or business or other purposes.
The 2021 census recorded 117,714 Hong Kong-born people resident in England, 3,715 in Wales and 1,982 in Northern Ireland. Hong Kongers who migrated to the UK under the BN(O) pathway introduced in 2020 are generally older and higher-educated than other immigrants to the UK.
Britain also wanted more control over their trade with China, as they could only trade with certain officials called Hong merchants. The Opium Wars resulted in two treaties, each expanding the size of Britain's Hong Kong territory.
Britain was able to coerce China into signing the treaties that acquired Hong Kong and leased the New Territories for 99 years. By the late 1970s, those days were long gone. Delicate negotiation, rather than gunboat diplomacy, was Britain's best hope of keeping control of Hong Kong.
The handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China was at midnight on 1 July 1997. This event ended 156 years of British rule in the former colony.
There are approximately 15,000 Australians living, working and studying in mainland China, and around 90,000 in Hong Kong, 7000 in Taiwan, and 1000 in Macau.
Pop. ±% p.a. At the 2021 census, 1,390,637 Australian residents identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry, accounting for 5.5% of the total population.
There are over 50 million overseas Chinese. Most of them are living in Southeast Asia where they make up a majority of the population of Singapore (75%) and significant minority populations in Malaysia (22.4%), Thailand (14%) and Brunei (10%).
Hong Kong is a large city which attracts many expats, more than half of whom (52%) move there for work reasons. Because of the large expat population, it is an extremely international city, popular among people from both nearby Asian countries and further away Western nations.
You can visit Hong Kong for up to 6 months without a visa. For up-to-date advice on entry requirements and restrictions, please visit the Hong Kong SAR Government's website.
You can visit Hong Kong for up to 6 months without a visa. Full details on the entry requirements can be found on the Travel Advice.
Set to expire in 2047, the current arrangement has permitted Hong Kong to function as its own entity under the name "Hong Kong, China" in many international settings (e.g. the WTO and the Olympics).
Claude MacDonald, the British representative during the convention, picked a 99-year lease because he thought it was "as good as forever". The United Kingdom did not think it would ever have to give the territories back and viewed the lease as a convenient agreement.
Reasons cited in favour of maintaining Hong Kong as part of China include: Legality: Article 1 of the Hong Kong Basic Law states that Hong Kong is an inalienable part of the People's Republic of China. Any advocacy for Hong Kong separating from China has no legal basis.
During the First Opium War, China cedes the island of Hong Kong to the British with the signing of the Chuenpi Convention, an agreement seeking an end to the first Anglo-Chinese conflict.
It was a colony of the Netherlands for about 40 years in the early to mid-17th century and was subsequently independent again for about two decades. China gained control there in the late 17th century and ruled Taiwan for some two centuries.
Britain seized Hong Kong during the First Opium War, and China's Qing Dynasty formally ceded it to the U.K. in a treaty in 1842. Until July 1997, Hong Kong was run by a British colonial administration.
Chinatown, Manchester
After London, Manchester is home to the largest Chinatown in the UK.
Chinese people have been settling in Britain for over 200 years. The first settlers tended to come via trading links between Britain's ports such as Liverpool with ports such as Shanghai. Outside of London, the largest Chinese communities are in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool.
Data published recently by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) from the Census 2021 has found the local Chinese population in Tower Hamlets is the third highest proportion in England and Wales, behind the City of London and Cambridge.