I just learned that the People's Republic of China "owns" all the land of Hong Kong (minus St. John's Cathedral). (source) I use quotation marks because like other places in China, the government (in this case the local Hong Kong government) auctions long term leases to plots of land.
Did the British government (Crown?) own all land while it was a part of the British Empire? How did the transfer of sovereignty work regarding this issue? If there were previous landowners, how if at all were they compensated?
I'd like to remind everyone it is against the rules to discuss events taking place in 1999 or later do to the "twenty year" rule. Sorry if this breaks some other rule, if so please remove it.
edit: typo in the title, I forgot the word by after owned. Whoops.
The handover of Hong Kong was in 1997 so it's safe to discuss the PRC's land policy in Hong Kong. But I'm not too familiar with it, so perhaps another user can comment on it.
Hong Kong was acquired piecemeal by the British government. The Hong Kong island was ceded to the British monarchy in 1842, thus making the island property of the British Crown (Crown Land):
...the Island of Hong-Kong, to be possessed in perpetuity by Her Britannic Majesty, her heirs and successors...
Kowloon was first leased, and then outright ceded to the British monarchy in 1860, thus also making it Crown land:
His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of China agrees to code to Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and to her heirs and successors, to have and to hold as a dependency of Her Majesty's colony of Hong Kong, that portion of the township of Cowloon, in the province of Kwang-Tung, of which lease was granted in perpetuity to HARRY SMITH PARKES, Esq., Companion of the Bath, a member of the Allied Commission at Canton, on behalf of Her Britannic Majesty's Government, by LAN TSUNG KWANG, Governor-General of Two Kwang.
The rest of the land, mostly rural farmlands and villages, was actually leased to the British government for 99 years ("As good as forever" according to the British representative) in the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory, signed in 1898:
It has now been agreed between the Governments of Great Britain and China that the limits of British territory shall be enlarged under lease to the extent indicated generally on the annexed map... The term of this lease shall be ninety-nine years.
This was also the treaty that set up the handover date of 1997. The same treaty also left an exclusion for the Kowloon Walled City:
It is at the same time agreed that within the city of Kowloon the Chinese officials now stationed there shall continue to exercise jurisdiction except so far as may be inconsistent with the military requirements for the defence of Hong Kong.
So to summarize, lands were either owned by the British crown, or by the Chinese government but leased to the British government. In any case, there were no private ownership of land apart from the aforementioned exclusions.
As for compensation, it was mentioned in the same treaty that "if land is required for public offices, fortifications, or the like official purposes, it shall be bought at a fair price." However, I believe this was never acted upon. The lost of their land, and the fear of a cultural shift, caused unrest among the local villagers, which eventually escalated into a tiny war known as the Six-Day War in 1899. The colonial government managed to put down the unrest but also relaxed the laws on rural land, including allowing the locals to continue their traditional inheritance laws and freer land usage. These special laws were the closest you could get to private land ownership. These special policies eventually caused controversies as Hong Kong was being urbanized and land became more scarce in the 1970s. The policies continue today and as you can probably imagine the controversy only intensified.