The
reclamation of land from the ocean has long been used in mountainous
Hong Kong to expand the limited supply of usable land with a total of around 60 square kilometres of land created by 1996. The first reclamations can be traced back to the early
Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 9 CE), when beaches were turned into fields for
salt production. Major land reclamation projects have been conducted since the mid-19th century.