Under common law, 99 year leases are the longest terms possible for any property. Leases between individuals for that term are understood to be lifetime; yet it has been used for country-to-country leases as well. Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was given to the United States 1903 as a 99-year lease, and more famously so did was island of Hong Kong, near China, to Britain.

On this day, June 9, in 1898, during the Second Convention of Peking China leased what was later called the New Territories to Britain, which founded on them the Crown Colony of Hong Kong.

Britain leased the Kowloon Peninsula, rent-free, as reparations for the Second Opium War. Britain was looking to add to their overseas empire and expand their opium trade on terms which the Chinese rejected. After the British ship Arrow was boarded by Chinese troops, and her crewmen arrested, the British declared war.