Taiwan Today

To most people in Taiwan, Macau is familiar in memory but far away from their concerns. From childhood history and geography lessons, they remember that Macau is a Chinese territory but became a Portuguese colony under an unequal treaty forced on the Ching emperor in the late 19th Century. Although the ROC government has been trying for decades to reclaim this Chinese territory, the people in Taiwan seldom visited there and knew little about the life of Macau's residents. This changed somewhat in July 1987, when the ROC government lifted a long-time ban and opened direct travel to Macau and Hong Kong for tourism.

In November 1987, the ROC government began allowing Taiwan residents to visit their relatives on the Chinese mainland for family reunions. Since then, the number of outbound Taiwan tourists and visitors to Macau has multiplied as travelers utilize the colony as one of their major gateways to the mainland.

Actually, most people in the world know very little about Macau and are barely conscious of its existence, not to speak of concern for its future under Peking's rule. International concern has been focused on assisting Hong Kong residents since 1984, when the Sino­-British Joint Declaration was signed. The world seemed to forget—if it ever knew—that only two years after 1997, over 400,000 Macau residents will also be put under Peking's authority.

In April 1987, the Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration was signed by Peking and Lisbon on the transfer of the sovereignty of Macau to mainland China in 1999. As in the case of Hong Kong, Peking promised that Macau would be a Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a "high degree of autonomy" and could continue the "existing capitalist system and way of life" for 50 years after Peking's takeover.

The news did have some impact on local residents, but not much. "To most Macau residents, Communist China's influence is nothing new because we have long been closely associated with the mainland," says Mok Lai Meng, head of the News & Public Affairs Department of the Radio Chinese Channel in the Teledifusào de Macau, the government-run radio and television service.

In Macau, 95 percent of the population is Chinese, three percent Portuguese, and two percent foreigners. About 60 percent of the 400,000 people in Macau originally came from mainland China. There is also large number of illegal immigrants from the mainland, said to number 40,000 persons, although this is a guess.

Macau has close geographic proximity and economic connections with the mainland. The territory, with a total area of six square miles (16 square kilometers), comprises a peninsula, on which the city of Macau is built, and the islands of Taipa and Coloane. At the extreme northern end of the peninsula, a narrow isthmus marked by an imposing gateway—the Portas do Cerco (Border Gate) built in 1849—joins Macau to mainland China's Kwangtung Province. The bordering special economic zone of Chuhai (Zhuhai) is an important locus of modern development in mainland China.

The close relations between Macau and the mainland can be traced back for one and a half centuries. When Hong Kong consisted of several thousand villages which had began to urbanize under the British colonists, the port of Macau was already crowded with ships carrying out Chinese silk, gold, and porcelain, and bringing in silver, ivory, and spices.

Macau is the oldest free port in China. The Portuguese leased it in 1554, using it as a bridgehead to do business with China. Controlling the vital sea routes of south China to other countries, Macau was the most prosperous trading center in the Far East before Hong Kong took its place in the second half of the 19th Century. After the treaty ports were opened along the mainland coast and the British subsequently settled in Hong Kong in 1841—some 40 miles to the northeast—Macau's economic importance gradually declined and Hong Kong developed into one of the world's major commercial and financial centers. Meanwhile, Macau continued to be a major outlet for rice, fish, piece goods, and other Chinese products.

Today, the entrepot also enjoys an active manufacturing and exporting business, mainly in textiles and garments. GNP in 1988 was US$2.5 billion with a per capita income of over US$6,000, and exports reached US$0.5 billion. The number of tourists in 1989 was about six million.

Starting in the 1980s, growing economic development stimulated social changes and gave rise to many new social problems. According to local residents, Macau is a very conservative society and has long had serious internal problems, at least from the perspective of the Chinese populace. A major event took place on January 23, 1967, when there was a confrontation between the Portuguese colonial government and Chinese people in Macau, resulting in a number of Chinese casualties. This unfortunate incident was a result of the xenophobic sentiments generated by the mainland's Cultural Revolution, which spread to Macau and triggered a riot against the Portuguese rulers.

Since the incident, civil society in Macau has been dominated by what locals call the "traditional force," which is composed of the main Chinese business and civic groups, that is, the Chinese establishment in Macau. Because members of the traditional force have been making money or benefitting from mainland China for generations, they naturally side with Peking. Their influence is great and their power has seldom been challenged.

With respect to government affairs, the Portuguese control things. "They occupy three-fourths of the government posts, especially at the middle and high­ ranking levels, and most professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and engineers are Portuguese," says Mok Lai Meng. "Although the government has since 1987 begun to pay attention to the 'localization' of public servants by cultivating more local Chinese talent, the end result is still that Chinese are mostly put in low-ranking technical posts. They are still far distant from the policy­-making level," she says.

Another problem concerns language. The laws and regulations applied in Macau are the same as those in Portugal. The Portuguese government treats Macau fairly, but the point is that all laws are in Portuguese, and very few local Chinese can understand them. "Most locals never really understand what their rights are," Mok says.

To most people in Macau, it makes no difference whether the Portuguese or the Chinese Communists rule the territory because "they are the same—bad," as Mok puts it.

But beginning with the post­-1980 economic growth and the expanding tourist industry, alterations in the scene began to appear. "Macau's social structure underwent major changes, and a 'new middle class' began to emerge," says Ng Kuok Cheong, Vice Chairman of the Social Science Association of Macau. "Not satisfied with material abundance, they began to pay more attention to public issues. They are dissatisfied with the current situation and hope it can be changed."

"The rising middle class and the younger generation have a different attitude toward society," says the Reverend Pedro Chung. He notes that "educational improvement is another factor contributing to the change." Chung is a Catholic father in Macau, and he is known to have been very active in the promotion of social reform. In his opinion, after the establishment of Macau's University of East Asia in the 1980s, local people have a greater opportunity for higher education. In addition, young people returning from advanced studies abroad and the penetrating voice of the mass media have influenced local youth to think seriously about society through comparisons with other parts of the world, and they have become more fearless about expressing their opinions. "The whole climate in Macau is changing," he notes.

Peter Au, director of the Research and Planning Office of the Institute of Social Work of Macau, provides another illustration of the trend toward the formation of new social forces. In a meeting on social work last year he found that currently there are 30-odd organizations with more than 600 social workers who serve society in their spare time. "A greater and greater number of social groups are coming up, and more and more people are increasingly concerned about society and are actively taking part in social service work," Au says enthusiastically. "There is indeed a big change in Macau in this respect at least."

But there is a negative side to the picture as well. "The government seems untouched by these changes and it fails to satisfy our needs," Ng Kuok Cheong says. "The Portuguese government never cares about the problems, and they rely on the traditional force to take care of the problems for them."

Peter Au says that in recent years the governor of Macau has set up several committees and invited local residents to join in consultations on public issues. But the move is regarded as strictly symbolic. For instance, a proposal was made in 1986 to set up a committee on social work, but it was not actually set up until May 1988, and only one meeting has been held since then. "It shows that the government still does not care," Au says. "All the social changes and our new needs have not affected the decision-makers. They just sit in their offices and continue to ask the traditional force to do things for them. But now even the traditional force feels unable to control the situation."

"The June 4th incident triggered an explosion of long-time dissatisfaction which had been hidden deep in the people's hearts," says Chung. After learning that the Peking students and residents had been slaughtered at Tienanmen, one-third of Macau's population took to the streets to demonstrate. "Not only young people from various groups, but also housewives, laborers, and traditional force people all joined together," he says. "It's the first time in Macau's history that so many people stood up together for anything."

Besides anger and worry because of Chinese Communist brutality, local people feel helpless to affect their future. They do not like the Portuguese and hope for a change, but an inhuman ruler would be even worse. June 4th was truly a turning point for Macanese. Because of the incident, they began to think seriously about 1999. If Peking leaders could bring themselves to use tanks to suppress the students, isn't it also possible that they would send tanks to suppress Macau residents after 1999?

"Many people used to feel that the communist takeover was no big deal because they already knew the situation well owing to frequent contacts between Macau and the mainland, but after June 4th they found it did matter," says Ng Kuok Cheong. "Even local Basic Law drafters began to realize the importance of more carefully drafting the Basic Law." Both Ng and Rev. Chung are members of the Basic Law Consultative Committee. According to them, most of the 22 drafters representing Macau are pro-Peking and always agree with their mainland counterparts.

Macau's 48-member Basic Law Drafting Committee (BLDC) was set up in October 1988 to design the mini­-constitution of the Macau Special Administrative Region to be established in 1999. The BLDC decided that the Basic Law would be drafted over a period of four years followed by a consultation period before being put into final form. On November 20, 1988 the Committee agreed on the structure of the Basic Law during its Third Plenary Session.

The 90-member Basic Law Consultative Committee (BLCC) was set up in April 1989. As in Hong Kong, the BLCC can only offer suggestions for the reference of the Drafting Committee. "From the structure of the draft Basic Law we can see that Macau members are still obedient to Peking," Ng says. "I am most dissatisfied with the texts on the fundamental rights and duties of inhabitants."

Peter Au agrees with Ng's view: "They only discuss general principles, but we need more detailed explanations and definitions." Although the BLDC has a few opposition people such as Ng and Chung, the voice of the opposition is still weak. "Ordinary people do not care about or believe in the Basic Law," says Sunny Chan, chief editor of Chinese TV News at Teledifusào de Macau. "We know the communists too well. To say anything is the same as saying nothing, so why should we say anything?"

People who think this way and are able to leave have already departed or are planning to do so. "It's happening every month, particularly after June 4th," says Mok Lai Meng. "My friends and relatives are all talking about leaving. And many have already gone. Even I am considering it."

"If you ask me, I don't have confidence at all in the future after 1999 and I will definitely leave," Sunny Chan says. Emigration is an option for only a portion of Macau's residents. As in Hong Kong, in Macau "the capitalists and professionals, the backbone of a society, are mostly leaving; as for the public officials, over 70 percent will go," Chan says.

Out of the 400,000-odd Macau residents, about 130,000 hold Portuguese passports and are free to emigrate to Portugal or any Western European country after 1992. But "passports cannot solve all the problems," Mok points out. Having studied in Portugal for several years and travelled in other Western European nations, she knows all about the difficulties of living abroad.

"Language is the first problem. Most Chinese residents do not understand Portuguese or any European lan­guage. How can they communicate with people there? Besides, to emigrate also requires enough money and certain skills in order to make a living. Most Macau people do not have either."

Since many Macau residents have no other alternative, some young people have been promoting democracy step by step. The Association for the Development of Democracy in Macau was set up after last June 4th by Ng and several other democracy advocates in Macau. The association is composed of activists who supported Peking's pro-democracy movement. But it is still not easy to par­ticipate in a political movement, mainly because of the long years of influence from mainland China. According to Ng, the association now has only a little over 40 members.

"It is difficult for a democracy movement to thrive unless we get help from the traditional force. But since the traditional force has very close connections with mainland China, we can hardly expect it to give us any support," Ng says. But he is still optimistic about the future of the democracy movement in Macau: "Since last June 4th, local intellectuals and social groups have started to shift their concern from bread and butter issues to political rights and freedoms. And the traditional force is showing signs of decline."

At the current stage, the democracy movement is important to Macau's future. Peking has promised that the "Macau people rule Macau" principle will be in effect after 1999. But there lies a dilemma. "We don't want to keep being ruled by the Portuguese; neither do we want the Chinese Communists to govern us," Peter Au says. "But it is doubtful if we have the ability to rule ourselves." After most of the Portuguese leave Macau, there will be vacancies in both the public and private sectors. But will the Macanese really be able to fill those vacancies and administer the territory properly?

Taiwan is mentioned by many as one of the places which can help Macau. Mok Lai Meng of the Teledifusào de Macau hopes Taiwan can increase investments in Macau as the most direct way of assistance. "Investment capital from Taiwan will help Macau's infrastructural devel­opment and increase job opportunities. That will not only boost local residents' confidence in our future, but it will also help establish Taiwan's influence here," she says, adding that Taiwan can take the initiative in bilateral contacts, especially in economic, tourist, and cultural fields.

"After the disturbances on January 23, 1967, the offices and personnel of the Kuomintang (KMT) were forced to pull out of Macau," Ng Kuok Cheong points out. "For two decades, Taiwan's influence has been uprooted. But now the climate is suitable for Taiwan to come back again."

Sunny Chan also indicates that after the June 4th incident, Taiwan's role became increasingly important to Macau people. "Local residents have no confidence in Communist China. Many friends of mine are thinking of choosing Taiwan as the place to go because we are all Chinese," he says.

The ROC government already has taken various steps to help Macau residents. In September 1987, Taiwan expanded its Hong Kong Affairs Task Force by adding Macau to the group's responsibilities. In the past few years, special measures have been formulated to help Macau residents interested in moving to Taiwan. Government agencies, particularly the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, have also simplified entry procedures for residents from Macau and have helped Macau residents to apply for investment, resettlement, education, and real estate purchases in Taiwan.

Taiwan's economic resources have been extended to the territory. Antonio Galhardo Simoes, a senior official in Macau, specifically mentioned Taiwan's investment in Macau in a recent report. The investments include a housing complex with tourist facilities on Taipa Island (the Taiwan equity participation is at least 40 percent of total capital) and construction of a new industrial complex. He encourages more Taiwan businessmen to come to Macau.

All visitors to Macau are tempted to try their luck in Macau's casinos. Dog­-racing, horse-racing, and the famous Macau Grand Prix make the "Oriental Las Vegas" attractive to tourists from all over the world.

But today Macau people are forced to take part in another form of gambling, one that has a much higher table stake—their own fate. Like Hong Kong people, they must do their best to in­fluence the dice that once cast will decide their life for the next century. For more than 400 years, Macau and its people have survived the tempestuous currents of history. The outcome of the new game will determine whether they can continue to maintain their freedom and prosperous life under communist rule after 1999.