Port Arthur is also the former name of the city of
Lüda in the
Liaoning province of
China. It sits at the southern end of the
Liaodong Peninsula east of
Beijing.
In the scramble for European concessions and spheres of influence in China, Port Arthur was leased to Russia in 1898 as terminus for the Chinese Eastern Railway. After the Russo-Japanese War, in which the Battle of Port Arthur was crucial, it was ceded to Japan in 1905 by the Treaty of Portsmouth. They united it with Dairen, the city to the north, which Japan had taken from China in their war of 1894-5.
After the defeat of Japan in 1945, China once more granted it as a base to Russia, which returned it to the new Communist government, its ally, in 1955.
The Chinese name of Port Arthur is Lüshun: the metropolis formed by merger with Dairen was given the name Lüda.