Hong Kong handover: timeline

Twenty years ago today, Hong Kong was returned to China, ending over a century of British rule

1842: Hong Kong was ceded in perpetuity" - for good - to Britain after China lost the first opium war. This is how the Manchester Guardian told its readers the news.

1860: Peace was short lived though. A second opium war, and another defeat for China, saw the British take the Kowloon peninsula.