The Colonial Heritage and the Crisis of Government Legitimacy

Abstract

The 1987 Joint Declaration of the PRC and Portugal stipulates that Macau’s current social and economic systems, lifestyle and laws currently in force will remain basically unchanged for 50 years. Article 5 of the Basic Law of the Macau SAR further stipulates that ‘the socialist system and policies shall not be practised in the Macau Special Administrative Region, and the previous capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years’. It is interesting to note that neither the Joint Declaration nor the Basic Law has specifically mentioned the status of the enclave’s current political system in post- 1999 Macau. Arguably, the political system is part of the social or capitalist system and thus Beijing’s promise not to practise ‘socialist system and policies’ in Macau implies that the current political system will also remain largely unchanged. However, it is probable that the Chinese government has some reservations about the colonial political system and has deliberately omitted to mention its future status in either of the two documents. Nonetheless, the fact that the Macau SAR government cannot possibly create a political system from scratch and Beijing’s concerns about political stability in the enclave almost ensure that the political system inherited from the Portuguese will remain – at least in the short-term – largely intact after the handover.