Hong Kong and Macau_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 14th Edition) - Andrew Stone [240]
Until the mid-19th century the history of Macau was a long series of incidents involving the Portuguese, Chinese and British, as the Portuguese attempted to maintain a hold on the territory. But as time progressed and the troublesome British wrested concession after concession out of China, the Portuguese grew bolder.
The Treaty of Nanking (1842) ceded the island of Hong Kong in perpetuity to the British; the Treaty of Tientsin (1860) gave them Kowloon on the same terms. The Portuguese felt that they, too, should take advantage of China’s weakness and push for sovereignty over the territory they had occupied for three centuries. Negotiations began in 1862, although it was not until 1887 that a treaty was signed in which China effectively recognised Portuguese sovereignty over Macau forever.
With the advent of the steamship, there were fewer trans-shipments from Chinese ports through Macau and more direct transactions between the mainland and Hong Kong. Macau’s future economy was greatly assisted by the legalisation of gambling in the 1850s, but by the close of the 19th century the ascent of the British colony and the decline of the Portuguese territory had become irreversible.
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Macau in the 20th Century
By the turn of the 20th century Macau was little more than an impoverished backwater, its glory days all but forgotten. It did, however, continue to serve as a haven for Chinese refugees fleeing war, famine and political oppression. Among them was Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China, who lived in Macau before the 1911 revolution. Even the birth of the Portuguese republic in 1910 had little effect on the sleepy outpost.
In the mid-1920s large numbers of Chinese immigrants doubled the number of Macau residents to 160,000. A steady stream of refugees from the Sino-Japanese War meant that by 1939 the population had reached 245,000. During WWII many people from Hong Kong and China, as well as Asian-based Euro-peans, took refuge in Macau, as the Japanese respected Portugal’s neutrality; by 1943 the population stood at 500,000. There was another influx of Chinese refugees in 1949 when the Communists took power in China. Macau was made an overseas province of Portugal in 1951, and from 1978 until about 1981 it was a haven for Vietnamese boat people.
Macau’s last great upset occurred in 1966 and 1967, when China’s Cultural Revolution spilled over into the territory. Macau was stormed by Red Guards, and violent riots resulted in some of them being shot and killed by Portuguese troops. The government proposed that Portugal abandon Macau forever, but China refused to hear of it, fearing the loss of foreign trade through the colony.
In 1974 a revolution restored democracy in Portugal and the new left-wing government began to divest Portugal of the last remnants of its empire, including Mozambique and Angola in Africa and East Timor in the Indonesian archipelago. Powerbrokers in Lisbon tried to return Macau to China as well, but the word from Beijing was that China wished Macau to remain as it was – at least for the time being.
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The End of Portuguese Rule
Once the Joint Declaration over Hong Kong had been signed by Britain and China in 1984, the latter turned its attentions to the future of Macau. Talks began in 1986 and an agreement was signed the following April.
Under the so-called Sino-Portuguese Pact, Macau would become a Special Administrative Region of China. The date set was 20 December 1999, ending 442 years of Portuguese rule. Like Hong Kong, the Macau SAR would enjoy a ‘high degree of autonomy’ for 50 years in all matters except defence and foreign affairs, under the slogan ‘one country, two systems’.