°The "March of the Volunteers"[5][6] is the national anthem of the People's Republic of China, including its special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. Unlike most previous Chinese state anthems, it is written entirely in the vernacular, rather than in Classical Chinese.
°Composed during the Japanese invasion of China, its lyrics were written as a dramatic poem by the poet and playwright, Tian Han in 1934 and set to music by Nie Er from Yunnan Province the next year for the film Children of Troubled Times. It was adopted as the PRC's provisional anthem in 1949 in place of the "Three Principles of the People" of the Republic of China and the Communist "Internationale". When Tian Han was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the song was briefly and unofficially replaced by "The East Is Red", played without words, then played with altered words. Restored to its original version, the "March of the Volunteers" was raised to official status in 1982, adopted by Hong Kong and Macau upon their restorations to China in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and included in the Chinese Constitution's Article 136 in 2004 (Article 141 in 2018).
°Hong Kong (Chinese: 香港, Cantonese: [hœ́ːŋ.kɔ̌ːŋ] (listen)), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (HKSAR), is a metropolitan area and special administrative region of the People's Republic of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta of the South China Sea. With over 7.5 million residents of various nationalities[d] in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world
°Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842.[16] The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898.[17][18] The whole territory was transferred to China in 1997.[19] As a special administrative region, Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of "one country, two systems".[20][e]