Guangzhouwan

Guangzhouwan — rendered in English at the time as Kwangchowan — was a coastal territory in the Guangdong province of China, leased to France and administered by French Indochina; it is the leased holding shown on the map. The territory was held from 1898 to 1945, when France returned the territory to the Republic of China. Its capital was Fort Bayard, on the deep harbour of the bay from which the lease took its name, and the enclave — islands, peninsula and anchorage on the Leizhou coast — functioned as the French toehold on the South China coast, administered as a constituent of French Indochina though never part of it. The Empire of Japan occupied the territory in February 1943, during the Second World War; following the surrender of Japan in 1945, France formally relinquished the territory, and Guangzhouwan returned to the Republic of China, becoming in time the Chinese city of Zhanjiang in Guangdong province.