On July 1 1997 the United Kingdom officially returned Hong Kong and the area surrounding it to its traditional owner, China. Hong Kong has been part of China for a very long time, but during the imperialism, the European imperialist, including the British Empire, came in East Asia and started to take control over strategically important locations, and Hong Kong was one of those places. The British were not that interested about occupying the interior of China, but instead they were focused on the good ports, as they were the ones that generated the most profit. Hong Kong was one of those ports, but unlike the other ports that China got back into its territory, Hong Kong remained to be under the governing of the UK. With lot of tensions between the two sides, as well as the increasing international pressure, the UK finally decided to return Hong Kong and the surrounding area back to China in 1997.
