Hong Kong (Chinese: 香港; literally: "Fragrant Harbour" or "Incense Harbour"), officially Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, is an autonomous territory south to Mainland China at the Pearl River Estuary of the Asia Pacific. With 7.2 million residents of various nationalities in a total land and sea area of 2,754 km², Hong Kong is the world's fourth most densely populated sovereign state or territory.

After the First Opium War (1839–42), Hong Kong became a British colony with the perpetual cession of Hong Kong Island, followed by the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 and a 99-year lease of the New Territories from 1898. Hong Kong was later occupied by Japan during the Second World War until British control resumed in 1945. In the early 1980s, negotiations between theUnited Kingdom and China resulted in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, which paved way for the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997, when it became a Special Administrative Region with a high degree of autonomy