Macau is not Hongkong

It was, by and large, a friendly affair although other European traders wou-ld also arrive on the spot and bickerings would lead to the Chinese rulers putting up an elaborate Barrier Gate just outside Macau to demarcate the territory of the "Foreign Devils". By the 1550s Macau became an exclusive Portug-uese pocket. Thus Portugal has ruled Macau for nearly five centuries while British rule of Hongkong lasted only a century and a half.

More striking was the contrast in the manner in which the two European powers established their hold in their respective colonies. The Portuguese,arrogant and ruthless and cruel in the Arabian Sea and the Malacca Straits, were different in the South China Sea. They never had a real showdown with the rulers of China. In fact, the Chinese welcomed them as Macau opened a window to the world for Chinese goods. There was not even a precise delineation of Macau’s boundaries with the mainland.

Britain on the other hand was belligerent from the start. It hit upon the most unethical trade concept in human history encouraging opium addiction among an entire populace so that British trading houses could make enormous profits by supplying the drug from India. The Opium Wars led to a military defeat for China and Hongkong was ceded to Britain in a treaty the Chinese always described as unequal. The antipathies generated by that opium-based conquest and its politics were to last long.

In due course power equations in Europe changed. Portugal as an imperi-al power declined and Britannia began ruling the waves. Macau’s role as an entrepot was taken over byHongkong which Britain steadily built up as a fina-ncial and business centre. Macau beca-me a famously "sleepy" place and Portugal, reduced to an inconsequential st- atus in Europe, seemed to like it that way.

In 1967 Mao Zedo-ng’s Cultural Revolution sparked rioting in Macau and the Portuguese withdrew into their shell ev en more pronouncedly. At one point they even asked China to take over the co-lony and let the Portu-guese go home. China sa-id no, they should hold on to their co- lony. This was the time when Britain was tightening its hold on Hongkong with an army of "old China hands" and Foreign Office Mandarin experts and sundry Chinawatchers giving the impression that British rule was the best for Hongkong.

That attitude came dramatically to the fore at the time of Hongkong’s handover to China in July 1997. The British politician who became the handover Governor of Hongkong, Chris Patten, suddenly became an advocate of dem-ocracy for Hongkong forgetting that for 150 years Britain had denieddemocracy to the same Hongkong. He challenged China at every turn and the final handover took place in an atmosphere of acrimony. The Western media predicted that Hongkong under the Chinese faced imminent collapse.

Hongkong did not collapse. Despite the recession and attendant problems, it has remained the world’s most amazing city of growth and colourfulness.

The contrast presented by Macau cannot be sharper. Its handover to China is taking place in the friendliest possible mood. No arguments, no needling, no controversies. Indeed, it can be said that apathy is the popular mood. The Chinese who constitute 95 per cent of the 436,000 population see China as the mother and Portugal as "just a step-father." And the Portuguese are happy that they can now go home.

But they were not the uninterested bystanders they have been all along. For the last about ten ye-ars they have been busy giving Macau an unprecedented infrastructural str-ength. This was the result of the Portuguese recognising two facts. First,that they should leave something behind in Macau that would redound favourably on the fair name of Portugal. Second, that they could easily afford to do so if only they take their due share of the unbelievably high revenue of the world-famous casino business in Macau.

With the money found, the government went on a spending spree. Major land reclamation and construction work transformed the waterfront skyline into something almost matching the Hongkong skyline. A typical project was the creation of two man-made lakes with their banks lines with 5 million sq.metres of retail space, hotels, residential and office towers and a six-lane highway. A theme park on reclaimed land with facilities projected to attract two million visitors annually is already getting a great deal of attention. A bridge called Lotus now links Macau directly with the mainland.

A Macau Cultural Centre has been put up with a price tag of $100 million.All this is of course in addition to what has made even sleepy Macau a renowneddestination the Macau Grand Prix, the Macau open golf tournament with $200,000 prize money, the Macau International Music Festival, the International Fireworks Competition and the well-known dog races besides horse races. Macau will not beat Hongkong but the ex-colonies are going to be twin attractions for visitors and businessmen alike in the years to come.

The politics of course will be different. Hongkong continues to be politically surcharged with anti-government demonstrations taking place frequently. In Macau there will be nothing of the kind. It will be designated, like Hong-kong, a Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a Chief Executive, a former banker named Edmund Ho. It will ha-ve, like Hongkong, a "high degree of autonomy".

One quarter of the population have accepted Lisbon’s offer of full Portuguese citizenship which entitles them to live and work anywhere in Europe. This was quite unlike what Britain did; it offered, reluctantly and fearfully, to a small number of Hongkongianssecond-class British passports.The practical, moderate, conservative Canadian-educated chartered accountant Edmund Ho’s main problem will be to decide whether Macau should continue to depend wholly on casino income, massive as it is, or diversify. The Chief Executive will have plenty of help from China.

George has written this article from Macau on the eve of the handover ceremony