The “99-year lease” may be the most bureaucratic of euphemisms for colonization. Those leases followed the arrival of foreign troops and gunboats, but by “negotiating” leases, rather than compelling surrender, the European powers could claim this was business, not conquest.
Read the article by James Carter: https://thechinaproject.com/2022/05/25/frances-hong-kong-the-leased-territory-of-guangzhouwan/
Narrated by John Darwin Van Fleet.
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