Timeline of Hong Kong

The earliest settlement. Neolithic sites at Sham Wan and elsewhere show people living on the coast and islands, fishing and making stone tools.

The Qin annexation. The region is incorporated into the Chinese empire under Qin Shi Huang, administered from Panyu, near modern Guangzhou.

The Tang clan arrives. The first of the Five Great Clans settles in what is now the New Territories. Walled villages, ancestral halls and rice farming follow over the next four centuries.

The last Song emperor. The Song court flees south ahead of the Mongols and passes through the area; a boy emperor is said to have sheltered at what is now Sung Wong Toi in Kowloon.

Tsui Sing Lau Pagoda. The Tang clan builds a pagoda at Ping Shan to improve the site’s geomancy. It is the only ancient pagoda still standing in Hong Kong.

The Great Clearance. The Qing order the coastal population moved 25 kilometres inland to starve out Ming loyalists at sea. Villages are abandoned and the policy is reversed after eight disastrous years.

Commissioner Lin destroys the opium. Lin Zexu confiscates and destroys around 1,000 tonnes of British opium at Humen. Britain declares war.

The British landing. Royal Navy forces raise the flag at Possession Point on Hong Kong Island. The waterline was where the street of that name now runs, several hundred metres inland after reclamation.

The Treaty of Nanking. Hong Kong Island is ceded in perpetuity at the end of the First Opium War.

Kowloon is ceded. The Convention of Peking adds the Kowloon peninsula south of Boundary Street after the Second Opium War.

The Peak Tram and the Star Ferry. Both begin operating within months of each other. Both are still running.

The plague. Bubonic plague breaks out in Tai Ping Shan, killing over 2,500 people. The government demolishes the entire district; Blake Garden marks the cleared ground.

The New Territories lease. Britain leases the land north of Kowloon for 99 years, to 30 June 1997 — the date that will determine everything afterwards. The clans resist in the Six-Day War and lose.

The trams begin. Double-deckers start running along the north shore of Hong Kong Island. The line still operates and is the only all-double-decker tram fleet in the world.

Sun Yat-sen and the revolution. Educated in Hong Kong and having planned repeatedly from it, Sun becomes provisional president of the Chinese republic.

The Canton–Hong Kong strike. A general strike and boycott lasting sixteen months paralyses the colony’s economy and shows the limits of colonial control.

The surrender. Hong Kong falls to Japan after eighteen days of fighting, on Christmas Day. The occupation lasts three years and eight months and the population falls from 1.6 million to 600,000.

Liberation, and the return. British administration resumes in August. Refugees begin arriving from China almost immediately.

The border closes. The Communist victory in China sends hundreds of thousands south. Hong Kong’s population passes two million within a year.

The Shek Kip Mei fire. A squatter settlement burns on Christmas Day, leaving around 53,000 homeless overnight and beginning the public housing programme that now houses close to half the population.

The Star Ferry riots. A proposed five-cent fare increase and a hunger strike lead to several nights of unrest and a curfew, prompting a review of colonial governance.

The leftist riots. An overspill of the Cultural Revolution brings strikes, bombs and 51 deaths. Substantial social and labour reform follows.

The Cross-Harbour Tunnel. The first road link between the island and Kowloon opens, ending total reliance on the ferries.

The ICAC. The Independent Commission Against Corruption is established after the Godber scandal and transforms a police force and civil service that had been systemically corrupt.

The MTR opens. The first line runs in Kowloon. Across the border the same year, Shenzhen is designated a special economic zone.

The Joint Declaration. Britain and China agree the transfer of the whole territory in 1997 under ‘one country, two systems’, guaranteed for fifty years to 2047.

Tiananmen. A million people march in Hong Kong. The crackdown in Beijing shapes the final decade of colonial rule and prompts substantial emigration.

The Basic Law. Hong Kong’s constitutional document is promulgated, setting out the terms of the fifty-year arrangement.

The Walled City is cleared. Demolition of Kowloon Walled City is completed, ending a century of jurisdictional limbo. A park opens on the site in 1995.

The handover. Sovereignty transfers at a ceremony in heavy rain. Chris Patten leaves on the royal yacht; the People’s Liberation Army crosses the border.

Kai Tak closes. The airport in the middle of Kowloon, with its notorious checkerboard approach, shuts overnight and all operations move to Chek Lap Kok.

SARS, and the Article 23 march. An outbreak kills 299 people. In July, half a million march against proposed national security legislation and the bill is withdrawn.

The Umbrella Movement. Seventy-nine days of street occupation over the method of electing the Chief Executive.

The protests. Demonstrations against an extradition bill grow into the largest and most sustained in the city’s history, continuing for months.

The National Security Law. Beijing imposes legislation creating offences of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion, with extraterritorial reach.

M+ opens, and the electoral overhaul. Asia’s first global museum of visual culture opens in West Kowloon. The same year, the electoral system is restructured and directly elected seats are substantially reduced.

The Palace Museum, and the Peak Tram rebuilt. Both open in a year still shaped by pandemic border controls, which are not fully lifted until 2023.

Article 23. Hong Kong’s own legislature passes the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, completing the legislation withdrawn in 2003.