Hong Kong

alternative initialism HK · alternative obsolete Hong-Kong · alternative obsolete Hong-kong · alternative obsolete Honkong · alternative dated Hongkong

1. A city and special administrative region in southern China, located on an island east of the Pearl River delta in the South China Sea; a former British colony.

   In 1962 a special law had to be passed to permit the immigration of several thousand Chinese refugees who had escaped from Communist China to Hong Kong.

   1964, John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants, Revised and Enlarged edition, Harper & Row, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 78–79

   3 more examples

   CHINA. A rebellion of more than ordinary importance is in progress in this country. At the departure of the last mail from Hong Kong numerous bands of robbers were plundering and burning throughout the provinces of Kangsi and Canton, and, having captured the city of Kintschan, had advanced to within 120 English miles of Canton.

   1850 December, “Foreign News”, in The Gentleman's Magazine, volume XXXIV, London: John Bowyer Nichols and Son, page 645

   The Chinese had promised to let Hong Kong keep its much more democratic political system, but I had the clear impression that the details of their reunion were still being worked out, and that neither side was fully satisfied with the present state of affairs.

   2005, Bill Clinton, My Life, volume II, New York: Vintage Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 437

   A 90-year-old Roman Catholic cardinal, a singer and at least two others have been arrested in Hong Kong on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces to endanger China’s national security, in an action widely condemned as a further sign of Beijing’s erosion of rights in the city.

   2022 May 11, “Reports: Hong Kong arrests Roman Catholic cardinal, 3 others”, in AP News, archived from the original on 12 May 2022

2. An island in southeastern China, Hong Kong Island, the site of the city of the same name, lying off Guangdong (Canton) province.

   Sampans and punts crowded the tight harbors of places like Shau Kei Wan on Hong Kong Island, and these fisherfolk cooked up the day’s catch for their customers on the most minimal of stoves.

   2016, Carolyn Phillips, “The Coastal Southeast”, in All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China, Ten Speed Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 189

   1 more example

   This two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom apartment is in the western section of Mid-Levels, an affluent residential area built into the northern slope of Victoria Peak on Hong Kong Island, in Hong Kong.

   2019 April 17, Marcelle Sussman Fischler, “House Hunting in … Hong Kong”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 17 Apr 2019, Real Estate

   Synonyms: Hsiang-kang, Xianggang, Hsiang-chiang, Xiangjiang

3. A special administrative region of China, which includes the city and island of the same name as well as nearby islands and the Kowloon Peninsula.
4. historicalA former British colony in 1843–1941 and 1945–1981 and then British Dependent Territory in 1981–1997 in modern southern China in the area of modern Hong Kong.