Macau in Transition: From Colony to Autonomous Region (review)

China resumed its effective exercise of sovereignty over Macau on December 20, 1999, when the territory became a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic. As with neighboring Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese control in 1997, a lengthy process of transition extending over almost thirteen years prepared Macau for its new status. Unlike Hong Kong, however, Macau had a much longer history of more than four centuries as the first permanent European settlement in China, which never surrendered sovereignty over the enclave to Portugal. Macau in Transition examines the process of transition from the signing of the Joint Declaration between Portugal and China in April 1987 to December 1999, focusing especially on the dynamics of interaction between the PRC and Portugal, the groups and individuals involved, and public opinion and mass political participation during the transition.

In almost every respect, for good or ill, Macau is commonly compared to its larger neighbor, and the comparison with the Hong Kong case is explicit throughout this study. Macau is much smaller than Hong Kong in geographical size, population, and economic significance. Consequently, Hong Kong has tended to treat Macau in a patronizing manner, and Macau has suffered from a perception of relative insignificance as a result. For China, motivating the return of both possessions was the need to present a positive example for Taiwan, the ultimate goal in the reunification of Greater China. But, as this study makes clear, the experiences of transition to Special Administrative Region for the two territories were quite different.

Herbert Yee, Professor of Government and International Studies and Director of the Chinese Studies Program at Hong Kong Baptist University, has been studying Macau's political culture for a number of years, particularly through public opinion surveys. Several chapters of the present work (chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8) are adapted from previously published articles by Professor Yee. At least three chapters (4, 5, and 7) are based substantially on the author's public opinion survey research, and another (chapter 6) involves the quantitative analysis of election results. It is often the case that monographs that incorporate previously published articles suffer from a loss of integration. While there is some redundancy and discontinuity in Macau in Transition, in general the chapters fit together quite well as they explore the several dimensions of the transition.

The Introduction explains the book's purpose and scope and previews some of the main themes of the subsequent chapters. Chapter 1, "Beijing's Attitude and Strategy toward the Transition," discusses the political context of the transition. Not only is the disparity between Hong Kong and Macau emphasized but also the "power asymmetry" between Portugal and China. The chapter is broader than its title implies, offering a bilateral history of the transition. The author is generally mildly critical of the Portuguese and favorable to the PRC in their respective ways of conducting the complex negotiations leading to the reversion.

"The Colonial Heritage and the Crisis of Government Legitimacy" (chapter 2) provides an incisive analysis of Macau's de facto colonial political heritage and the problem of political legitimacy that afflicted the Portuguese administration of Macau. The author maintains that Portugal's failure to promote localization of the civil service and Portuguese language among the population prior to the handover created a communication gap between the colonial administration and the local Chinese population that left it in a weak bargaining position with respect to China. The implications of Macau's inherited political culture for post-1999 Macau are a weak sense of political legitimacy bequeathed by the Portuguese to the Special Administrative Region that will be strengthened only by solving the "three big problems" of law and order, economic depression, and bureaucratic inefficiency.

For China, the most urgent issues were localization of the civil service, legalization of Chinese as an official language, and localization of law—the subjects of chapter 3. The increasingly paramount interest of Portugal, on the...