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Later,after New Kowloon was defined from the area between the Boundary Street and the Kowloon Ranges spanned from Lai Chi Kok to Lei Yue Mun,and the extension of the urban areas of Kowloon,New Kowloon was gradually urbanised and absorbed into Kowloon.
The New Territories now comprises only the mainland north of the Kowloon Ranges and south of the Sham Chun River,as well as the Outlying Islands. It comprises an area of 952 square kilometres (368sqmi).[1] Nevertheless,New Kowloon has remained statutorily part of the New Territories instead of Kowloon.
Alarmed by the encroachment of other European powers in China,Britain also feared for the security of Hong Kong. In June 1898,using the most favoured nation clause that it had previously secured from China,the United Kingdom demanded and received an extension of Kowloon[6] to counter the establishment of France's new Guangzhouwan colony,which was well reinforced by their control of nearby Indochina. In similar fashion,in July,it secured Weihaiwei in Shandong in the north as a base for operations against the Germans in Jiaozhou Bay (Qingdao) and the Russians in Liaodong (Dalian). Chinese officials stayed in the walled cities of Kowloon City and Weihaiwei.
The extension of Kowloon was called the New Territories. The additional land was estimated to be 365 square miles (950km2) or 12 times the size of the existing colonial Hong Kong at the time.[7][verification needed]
The British ceremony in Tai Po,1899,assuming control of the New Territories
Although the convention was signed on the 9 June 1898 and became effective on 1 July,the British did not take over the New Territories immediately. During this period,there was no Hong Kong governor and Wilsone Black acted as administrator. James Stewart Lockhart,the colonial secretary of Hong Kong,was sent back from England to make a survey of New Territories before formal transfer. The survey found that the new frontier at Sham Chun River (Shenzhen river) suggested by Wilsone Black was far from ideal. It excluded the town of Shenzhen (Sham Chun),and the boundary would divide the town. There was no mountain range as a natural border. Lockhart suggested moving the frontier to the line of hills north of Shenzhen. This suggestion was not received favourably and the Chinese official suggested the frontier be moved to the hill much further south of the Sham Chun River. It was settled in March 1899 that the boundary remain at the Sham Chun River.
The new Hong Kong governor,Henry Blake,arrived in November 1898. The date for the takeover of the New Territories was fixed as 17 April 1899,and Tai Po was chosen as the administrative centre. The transfer was not smooth and peaceful. In early April 1899,the captain superintendent of police,Francis Henry May,and some policemen erected a flagstaff and temporary headquarters at Tai Po and posted the governor's proclamation of the takeover date. Fearing for their traditional land rights,in the Six-Day War of 1899,a number of clans attempted to resist the British,mobilising clan militias[8] that had been organised and armed to protect against longshore raids by pirates. The militia men attempted a frontal attack against the temporary police station in Tai Po that was the main British base but were beaten back by superior force of arms. An attempt by the clansmen at guerilla warfare was put down by the British near Lam Tsuen with over 500 Chinese men killed,and collapsed when British artillery was brought to bear on the walled villages of the clansmen. Most prominent of the villages in the resistance Kat Hing Wai,of the Tang clan,was symbolically disarmed,by having its main gates dismounted and removed. However,in order to prevent future resistance the British made concessions to the indigenous inhabitants with regards to land use,land inheritance and marriage laws;the majority of which remained in place into the 1960s when polygamy was outlawed. Some of the concessions with regard to land use and inheritance remain in place in Hong Kong to this day and is a source of friction between indigenous inhabitants and other Hong Kong residents.
Lord Lugard was governor from 1907 to 1912,and he proposed the return of Weihaiwei to the Chinese government,in return for the ceding of the leased New Territories in perpetuity. The proposal was not received favourably,although if it had been acted on,Hong Kong might have remained forever in British hands.
Much of the New Territories was,and to a limited extent still is,made up of rural areas. Attempts at modernising the area did not become fully committed until the late 1970s,when many new towns were built to accommodate the population growth from urbanised areas of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. Despite rapid development of the new towns,which now accommodate a population of over 3million,the Hong Kong government confines built-up areas to a few areas and reserves large parts of the region as parkland.
According to the 2021 census,the population of the New Territories was 3,984,077,representing 53.7% of Hong Kong's total population. A total of 90.4% of the residents of New Territories use Cantonese as their main language. Meanwhile,3.5% of its residents use English,2.0% use Mandarin Chinese,and 2.3% use other Chinese dialects. A total of 93.1% the district's population is of Chinese descent. The largest ethnic minority groups are Filipinos (2.1%),Indonesians (1.8%),South Asians (1.1%),Mixed (0.8%) and Whites (0.7%). [2]
Lee, Ho Yin; DiStefano, Lynne Delehanty (2002). A Tale of Two Villages: The Story of Changing Village Life in the New Territories. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-592859-4.
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