Macao
Macao
Type of Government
Macao is governed as a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China. It is directly under the authority of the Chinese central government but has a high degree of independence in its economic and political affairs.
Background
Macao is one of two special administrative regions of the People’s Republic of China (the other is Hong Kong). It is located on the southeastern coast of China on the Pearl River estuary. The Macao Special Administrative Region comprises the Macao Peninsula, which extends from Guangdong province to the islands of Taipa and Colôane; the islands are connected to the mainland by bridges.
Because of its strategic location, Macao became a stopping point for international merchants early on. The area was first settled in the mid-sixteenth century by the Portuguese, who established a trading post there for commerce between Lisbon, Portugal, and Nagasaki, Japan. Beginning in 1670 Portugal leased the Macao Peninsula from China and appointed a governor to oversee its operations, though the Chinese retained official sovereignty over the territory. Macao thrived as a center of trade until the mid-nineteenth century, when it was eclipsed by Hong Kong, which became a free port under British control in the 1840s.
Portugal stopped making lease payments to China in 1849 and declared Macao independent of Chinese rule. According to the Treaty of Tianjin (1862), Macao became a Portuguese colony; however, the Chinese never ratified the treaty, so the territory was never officially ceded to the Portuguese. Macao’s status was resolved by the Protocol of Lisbon (1887), which stipulated that China would recognize Portugal’s right to occupy and govern Macao; in exchange Portugal agreed that it would not transfer the territory to another country without China’s approval.
Following a military coup d’état (sudden overthrow of a government) in Portugal in 1974, the Portuguese government granted independence to Macao and recognized the region as a Chinese territory. The Chinese, however, did not accept the territory until 1979, when diplomatic relations were established between Portugal and the People’s Republic of China. The two nations finally reached an agreement to return Macao to Chinese rule in 1987. According to the Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration, Macao was declared a special administrative region within China, effective on December 20, 1999.
Government Structure
Macao is governed as a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China. It is directly under the authority of China’s central government, which controls defense and foreign policy matters, but has a high degree of independence in its economic and political affairs. Macao’s relationship with China and its governmental structure are outlined in the Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region, which was adopted in 1999.
The president of the People’s Republic of China serves as Macao’s head of state. The chief executive serves as the head of government and is appointed to a five-year term by China’s central government on the recommendation of a three-hundred-member election committee. The chief executive is advised by the ten-person Executive Council.
Macao’s legislature, the Assembleia Legislativa da Região Administrativa (Legislative Assembly of the Macao Special Administrative Region), is unicameral—that is, it has only one chamber. The Legislative Assembly consists of twenty-nine members serving four-year terms: twelve members are directly elected by popular vote, ten members are appointed to represent the region’s main constituencies, and seven members are chosen by the chief executive.
The Macanese legal system is based on Portuguese law. The judiciary was administered from Portugal until 1993, when an independent court system was established. The Tribunal de Ultima Instancia (Court of Final Appeal), headed by a chief justice, is the ultimate judicial authority. All judges are appointed by the chief executive on the recommendation of a selection committee.
Political Parties and Factions
Macao has no formal political parties, but several political associations are represented in the legislature, including the Associação de Novo Macau Democrático (New Democratic Macao Association), the Associação dos Cidadãos Unidos de Macau (United Citizens Association of Macao), the União para o Desenvolvimento (Union for Development), and the União Promotora para o Progresso (Union for Promoting Progress).
Major Events
After more than four centuries of Portuguese rule Macao was returned to Chinese rule in 1999. The Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration, which was approved by the National People’s Congress of China in 1993 and became effective in 1999, gave the Macanese the right to elect local leaders, to travel freely within China, and to preserve their unique cultural heritage; in turn, the Chinese government assumed responsibility for Macao’s defense and foreign policy. The Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region, which also took effect in 1999, serves as Macao’s constitution. The treaty and the Basic Law are to remain in effect until 2049.
Twenty-First Century
In 2000 Macao held its first elections under Chinese rule, turning out a record number of voters and electing a Chinese-majority legislature. The region’s key challenge in the twenty-first century is the preservation of its independence and unique heritage under Chinese authority.
Gunn, Geoffrey C. Encountering Macau: A Portuguese City-State on the Periphery of China, 1557–1999. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996.
Shipp, Steve. Macau, China: A Political History of the Portuguese Colony’s Transition to Chinese Rule. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997.
Yee, Herbert S. Macau in Transition: From Colony to Autonomous Region. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Macao
Macao
Macao (also Macau), a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China, occupies a small, hilly peninsula located on the west shore of the Pearl River (or Zhujiang River) on the southeast coast of China. Originally less than 15 square kilometers (5.8 square miles), the peninsula and the adjacent islands of Taipa and Colôane have expanded by land reclamation since the early twentieth century to 27 square kilometers (10.4 square miles). The population in 2004 was approximately 460,000, 95 percent comprising Chinese immigrants from the South China provinces, plus a small number of perhaps no more than 5,000 Macanese, the mixed-blood descendants of early Portuguese unions with Asian peoples.
Macao was founded in 1557 by Portuguese traders seeking a location for a permanent commercial settlement. Until the founding of Hong Kong nearly 300 years later, Macao was the only permanent European settlement in China. By 1600 Macao had become a thriving cosmopolitan city, its prosperity founded on the trade network from Goa in India, to Malacca on the Malay Peninsula, to Macao, and on to Nagasaki in southern Japan.
By the mid-seventeenth century the Portuguese seaborne empire declined precipitously under the assault of the Dutch, who took Malacca in 1641. In 1640 Japan expelled all foreigners and closed the country. Macao's prosperity collapsed, and the city survived as a center of local Southeast Asian trade. As the new colonial powers, led by Britain, arrived in pursuit of the China trade in the late eighteenth century, Macao's importance was revived as a temporary refuge for Europeans involved in the Canton (Guangzhou) trade. But when Hong Kong was founded by the British in 1842 in the wake of the first Opium War (1839–1842), Macao was relegated to a backwater, its inferior harbor increasingly unable to accommodate modern ships. By the early twentieth century Macao had acquired notoriety for gambling and various forms of vice. Its principal industries then included matches, fireworks, incense, furniture, and cheap toys. After World War II (1939–1945) Macao's economy remained stagnant, but the establishment of a gambling syndicate and the growth of tourism in the 1960s saw its slow revival.
China had never ceded sovereignty over the territory, and the Portuguese paid ground rent for the privilege of occupation. In the late nineteenth century Portugal attempted to claim formal sovereignty over Macao and a treaty in 1887 recognized Macao as a colony under perpetual Portuguese occupation. Its status remained ambiguous until the 1980s when Hong Kong's ultimate return to China in 1997 was settled with Britain. Negotiations between China and Portugal led to the return of Macao to Chinese control on December 20, 1999. The agreement preserved Macao's economy, society, culture, and quasi-autonomous government for at least fifty years.
From the 1980s Macao experienced rapid economic growth and expansion. Tourism and gambling grew vigorously with the construction of an airport, new hotels, and casinos. Fifty-five percent of municipal revenues derive from a tax on gambling. In 2002 the gambling monopoly was opened to bidding and new Las Vegas syndicates won places in Macao. Macao's robust economy has become an integral part of the Pearl River Delta economic region.
see also China, After 1945; China, First Opium War to 1945; China, to the First Opium War; Chinese Diaspora; Empire, Portuguese; Hong Kong, from World War II; Hong Kong, to World War II; Opium; Treaty Port System.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cheng, Christian Miu Bing. Macau: A Cultural Janus. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1999.
Porter, Jonathan. Macau: The Imaginary City, Culture, and Society, 1557 to the Present. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.
Macao
http://www.macau.gov.mo/index_en.html
Macao
Macao ★★★ 1952
On the lam for a crime he didn't commit, an adventurer sails to the exotic Far East, meets a buxom cafe singer, and helps Interpol catch a notorious crime boss. A strong film noir entry. Russell sneers, Mitchum wise cracks. Director von Sternberg's last film for RKO. 81m/B VHS, DVD . Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, William Bendix, Gloria Grahame; D: Josef von Sternberg.