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Hong Kong, a large and prosperous city-state on the coast of southern China, was a British colonial possession until 1997. It is a major trading center and has over seven million inhabitants on just over 400 square miles of land. Hong Kong consists of Hong Kong Island, several hundred lesser islands, the mainland city of Kowloon, and the mainland region of the New Territories. The New Territories were leased by China to Great Britain on June 9, 1898, for a term of 99 years beginning on July 1 of that year. This region comprises over nine-tenths of modern Hong Kong.

On April 27, 1997, at a ceremony featuring former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher as its keynote speaker, the Southeast Asian port city of Hong Kong officially opened the Lantau Link. The Lantau Link connects Hong Kong with a new international airport and other facilities located offshore at and around Lantau Island. It consists of three main structures. The first is the Tsing Ma Bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge for both road and rail traffic. Approximately 1.3 miles long, it contains roughly 500,000 cubic yards of concrete, 50,000 tons of steel, and 100,000 miles of suspension cables. The second is the Kap Shui Mun Bridge, which is the world's longest span cable-stayed road-and-rail bridge. It is over 800 yards long. The third is the Ma Wan Viaduct, an elevated roadway consisting of a series of short spans supported by pillars, which is over 500 yards long. Regular traffic began crossing the Lantau Link on May 22, 1997.

The 2019 Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests, also known as the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (ELAB) Movement, was a series of protests that began in Hong Kong following the introduction of the Fugitive Offenders Bill by the city’s government in early 2019. The bill was designed to allow local authorities to seize and extradite criminal fugitives wanted in territories outside Hong Kong who did not have extradition agreements with the Hong Kong government. Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China, and citizens worried that such a bill would threaten the region’s independence and civil freedoms because Hong Kong’s residents and visitors could be extradited to mainland China, where they would then be subjected to mainland authority. The protests persisted for several months following the announcement and grew to include hundreds of thousands of citizens marching in opposition to the bill and later in the name of pro-democracy and anti-police brutality. Protests escalated to violent levels during this period as demonstrators vandalized government buildings. Conflict between protestors, police, and gangs also intensified as the months wore on. Demonstrators laid out a set of demands that needed to be met before the protests ceased, including a promise to scrap the Fugitive Offenders Bill, an inquiry into police brutality against protestors, and action toward democratic reforms such as universal suffrage for elections.