The Last Six Million Seconds

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THE SECOND TREATY of Peking of 1898 was one of the more bizarre treaties of the British colonial era. The British had already occupied Hong Kong, a small island off the south coast of Canton in southern China, by 1841, and extended their occupation to a small part of mainland Canton, known as Kowloon, by 1860. The purpose of the occupations, which were carried out by force of arms, was to establish a base from which to continue the sale of opium to the Chinese mainland, in the teeth of opposition from the emperor of China. The trade had grown so successful by the 1890s (twenty million Chinese were addicted to opium) that the British required more land, principally to ensure that Hong Kong and Kowloon could be defended in case of attack. What they extracted, more or less at gunpoint, in the Second Treaty of Peking was a lease of a larger area of land contiguous with Kowloon and stretching thirty miles north into mainland China. Although the newly acquired territory included some of the more ancient cultivated lands in the world, the British named them the New Territories. The lease of the New Territories was dated July 1, 1898, with an expiration date ninety-nine years hence: June 30, 1997.

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