ABSTRACT
Hong Kong is a unique place in the world. It has encountered enormous economic, social, and cultural changes in the past one-and-a-half centuries. From a relatively unpopulated territory at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Hong Kong has grown into one of the most important international financial centres in the world. Hong Kong was only a small fishing village when it came under British colonial rule in 1841, but it underwent a rapid and successful period of industrialization from the 1960s that captured much attention from economists and sociologists in the 1980s and 1990s. Effective on July 1, 1997, the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned to the People's Republic of China (PRC), in accordance with the “one country, two systems” principle entrenched in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration signed between the United Kingdom and the PRC. Regarding its population, it grew from 7,450 in 1841 (Ng, 1984) to 7.23 million in 2014 (Census and Statistics Department, 2014). With a total area of 1,092 square kilometres, Hong Kong has become one of the world's most densely populated places.
