Financial Institutions and Markets in Hong Kong

Abstract

Located near the mouth of the Pearl River on the coast of Southern China, Hong Kong remains one of the last major possessions of the once vast British Empire. Established as a naval base and trading post under the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, the Colony’s original territory of some 32 square miles was expanded to cover the Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters’Island (another 3.75 square miles) under the First Convention of Peking in 1860, and the New Territories (some 365.75 square miles) on a 99-year lease signed under the Second Convention of Peking in 1897.¹