New China and Old Macao

Abstract

T HE LONG-ESTABLISHED PATERN of Sino-Portuguese coexistence in Macao has withstood the first shock of aggressive Chinese Communism and promises to survive as a unique phenomenon in international relations. Unlike other European enclaves in China, the Portuguese settlement at Macao was founded on the basis of cooperation rather than violence, and it is because of their continued willingness to cooperate today that the Portuguese are permitted to remain. The men who now control the colony's political life are pursuing a tradition as old as the colony itself in compromising with China's demands for a voice in Macao's affairs and a large measure of authority over the Chinese who comprise ninety-eight percent of the population. Because of China's virtual domination of the colony's economy, most of Macao's rich men have found it necessary to affiliate themselves with the Communists in order to save their commercial interests, and thousands of workers have had to join Communist unions in order to keep their jobs. Taking advantage of the local wealth at their disposal, the Communists are even challenging the Catholics for first place in the field of social welfare. The political influence exercised by the Communists is commensurate with their economic power, for they hold the strings of Macao's fattest purses. While the Portuguese administration continues to govern the colony much as it has always done, important and delicate questions are settled only after consultation with the Communist representatives. Galling as this situation is to many of Lisbon's civil servants, they are acutely aware of what, in view of the Communists' power, is or is not possible. Cooperation between the new China and ancient Macao is a policy laid down by the Chinese and accepted by the Portuguese. But this situation is much older than Chinese Communism. A mere speck on the southeast coast of China, this indefensible colony was for centuries prey to the whims of petty mandarins with insatiable appetites for squeeze, and the colony's policy towards China has long centered on the problem of appeasing these gentlemen at the least possible cost. The Macao Portuguese who have managed this policy, themselves not free from graft, learned at a very early date the importance of face and of patience in dealing with the Chinese, and far more than any other Europeans they succeeded in living in peace and harmony with the Middle Kingdom. No diplomacy could be so adroit, however, as to compensate for the extraordinary weakness of the