Macao’s Surrender to Red China

The tiny Portuguese Overseas Province of Macao, for years a key Western listening post, has become a Red China in microcosm. Until the recent riots, the blind, the old, and the infirm, and other “useless mouths,” often came from China with legal exit permits issued by the Communist security office on the mainland; others arrived by various illegal and dangerous means, including swimming across. Many of them were shot dead by Communist guards or drowned in the sea. But once they touched the soil of Macao, they were given proper care by government or relief agencies. No one was ever turned back. But this era ended when the era of the Red Guards began. It is important to understand how this transformation was brought about because the same kinds of troubles are in store for Hong Kong. Indeed, they’ve already started. British authorities there are studying just what the Portuguese did wrong in Macao. The trouble began on the minuscule dependent island of Taipa, the site of Macao’s flourishing fireworks industry and a medical and psychiatric center for the rehabilitation of drug addicts and other human flotsam rejected by China. Apparently trying to win over the 6,000 residents of Taipa, Macao’s leftist leaders decided to build a new primary school on the isle. They applied for a permit in the spring of 1966 to demolish a row of three dilapidated buildings. But the Portuguese authorities allegedly held up the application on grounds that the Chinese failed to produce a written consent by the original landlord (who, by the way, died a century ago). After eight months the Chinese boldly started pulling down the tenement houses. The demolition work was stopped by the authorities on technical grounds, but New China News Agency, official organ of the Chinese Communist Party, reacted at once, charging police brutality. Properly handled, the Taipa incident would have been a minor scuffle. But the authorities completely ignored the Communist protest and demands, unaware that they were being watched closely from Peking. Fifteen days later, on November 30, Peking struck. A news item disseminated by NCNA denounced the “brutal persecution of Chinese residents on Taipa island in Macao.” Taking their cue, the Chinese in the Portuguese colony staged a second protest meeting, and it was during this session that their leaders hit on the vigilante tactics of the Red Guards. Bloody riots followed, as Communist contact-men spread the word, by motorcycle, to their compatriots in the heart of Macao. Some 5,000 slogan-chanting demonstrators poured into the streets and went on the rampage the same afternoon and again the next day, shouting, “Kill the Portuguese devils!,” ransacking the City Council building, pulling down the bronze statue of a Portuguese military hero in the public square, and capsizing scores of cars parked along the streets. To prevent police reinforecements, hundreds of taxi drivers, members of a leftist union, blocked the streets leading to the City Council. By the second day the situation was out of hand and the army resorted to rifles and machine guns in what Peking denounced as a “sanguinary suppression” of “patriotic — compatriots.” When it was all quiet on the central front, eight Chinese, including five teen-agers, had died and 130 others had been injured. The new governor accepted the original five-point demand of the Taipa residents concerning the November 15 incident. But, it was too late.

The Chinese Students’ Union in Macao put forward five more demands, and appeal for popular support through leftist Chinese papers. The Portuguese authorities tried to localize the issue, but their hopes were dashed when Peking intervened officially and forcefully. : In making the incidents a cause célébre Red China hoped to remind Lisbon of the latter’s vulnerable position and to impress upon all Overseas Chinese Peking’s power to act as their leader, spokesman and protector. (Portugal does not have a diplomatic mission in Taipei, but the Nationalists do have a legation in Lisbon and formerly maintained a “Special Foreign Affairs Office” in Macao te handle the signing of Chinese Nationalist passports and visas, to protect the welfare of the Chinese nationals and help rehabilitate refugees from the mainland. This office was closed on March 29, 1965 as a result of political pressure from Peking.) Governor de Carvalho was now faced with a great dilemma. With Macao’s mother country located nearly 10,000 miles away, he had no alternative but to give in. “Distant water cannot extinguish a fire at hand,” says a Chinese proverb. Denounced by the United Nations, hated by the Africans, boycotted by the Macao Chinese in a “Three No” campaign—no payment of taxes, no sales of food, no rendering of services—the Portuguese ffinally surrendered. They pledged to prohibit all relief, educational and other activities operated by the Nationalist Chinese in Macao. (During the past fifteen years, the anti-Communist “Refugee Relief Association” has aided about 110,000 refugees from mainland China with money, clothing and jobs.) They pledged also that all refugees who escape from the mainland into Macao shall be sent back across the border and handed over to the Chinese authorities. Thus Macao, which in the past always prided itself on its magnanimity, sacrificed its traditional neutrality and will be a haven of refugees no more. Lost also is its value as a source of intelligence for “China watchers.” One important reason for the capitulation, apart from Peking’s political blackmail, was the pressure exerted by local Chinese millionaires who run the big businesses of gold import, greyhound racing and gambling. According to reliable sources, the two million-odd patacas in compensation was shelled out by these “leftist capitalists” who believed that surrender to the Reds was less detrimental to Macao’s economy and that, anyway, their “losses” could be receuped within a few months. Economically, Macao depends on mainland China for the bulk of its food supply. A protracted blockage of food and other daily necessities would be as efficient as an invasion. The Chinese Communists have successfully used the riots to blackmail Portugal and to reap a political harvest. So although theoretically sovereignty lies with the Portuguese authorities, the strings will now be pulled by Peking, and Macao virtually exists at the sufferance of Red China.

SH

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S. T. Hsieh

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The tiny Portuguese Overseas Province of Macao, for years a key Western listening post, has become a Red China in microcosm. Until the recent riots, the blind, the old, and the infirm, and other “useless mouths,” often came from China with legal exit permits issued by the Communist security office on the mainland; others arrived by various illegal and dangerous means, including swimming across. Many of them were shot dead by Communist guards or drowned in the sea. But once they touched the soil of Macao, they were given proper care by government or relief agencies. No one was ever turned back. But this era ended when the era of the Red Guards began. It is important to understand how this transformation was brought about because the same kinds of troubles are in store for Hong Kong. Indeed, they’ve already started. British authorities there are studying just what the Portuguese did wrong in Macao. The trouble began on the minuscule dependent island of Taipa, the site of Macao’s flourishing fireworks industry and a medical and psychiatric center for the rehabilitation of drug addicts and other human flotsam rejected by China. Apparently trying to win over the 6,000 residents of Taipa, Macao’s leftist leaders decided to build a new primary school on the isle. They applied for a permit in the spring of 1966 to demolish a row of three dilapidated buildings. But the Portuguese authorities allegedly held up the application on grounds that the Chinese failed to produce a written consent by the original landlord (who, by the way, died a century ago). After eight months the Chinese boldly started pulling down the tenement houses. The demolition work was stopped by the authorities on technical grounds, but New China News Agency, official organ of the Chinese Communist Party, reacted at once, charging police brutality. Properly handled, the Taipa incident would have been a minor scuffle. But the authorities completely ignored the Communist protest and demands, unaware that they were being watched closely from Peking. Fifteen days later, on November 30, Peking struck. A news item disseminated by NCNA denounced the “brutal persecution of Chinese residents on Taipa island in Macao.” Taking their cue, the Chinese in the Portuguese colony staged a second protest meeting, and it was during this session that their leaders hit on the vigilante tactics of the Red Guards. Bloody riots followed, as Communist contact-men spread the word, by motorcycle, to their compatriots in the heart of Macao. Some 5,000 slogan-chanting demonstrators poured into the streets and went on the rampage the same afternoon and again the next day, shouting, “Kill the Portuguese devils!,” ransacking the City Council building, pulling down the bronze statue of a Portuguese military hero in the public square, and capsizing scores of cars parked along the streets. To prevent police reinforecements, hundreds of taxi drivers, members of a leftist union, blocked the streets leading to the City Council. By the second day the situation was out of hand and the army resorted to rifles and machine guns in what Peking denounced as a “sanguinary suppression” of “patriotic — compatriots.” When it was all quiet on the central front, eight Chinese, including five teen-agers, had died and 130 others had been injured. The new governor accepted the original five-point demand of the Taipa residents concerning the November 15 incident. But, it was too late.

The Chinese Students’ Union in Macao put forward five more demands, and appeal for popular support through leftist Chinese papers. The Portuguese authorities tried to localize the issue, but their hopes were dashed when Peking intervened officially and forcefully. : In making the incidents a cause célébre Red China hoped to remind Lisbon of the latter’s vulnerable position and to impress upon all Overseas Chinese Peking’s power to act as their leader, spokesman and protector. (Portugal does not have a diplomatic mission in Taipei, but the Nationalists do have a legation in Lisbon and formerly maintained a “Special Foreign Affairs Office” in Macao te handle the signing of Chinese Nationalist passports and visas, to protect the welfare of the Chinese nationals and help rehabilitate refugees from the mainland. This office was closed on March 29, 1965 as a result of political pressure from Peking.) Governor de Carvalho was now faced with a great dilemma. With Macao’s mother country located nearly 10,000 miles away, he had no alternative but to give in. “Distant water cannot extinguish a fire at hand,” says a Chinese proverb. Denounced by the United Nations, hated by the Africans, boycotted by the Macao Chinese in a “Three No” campaign—no payment of taxes, no sales of food, no rendering of services—the Portuguese ffinally surrendered. They pledged to prohibit all relief, educational and other activities operated by the Nationalist Chinese in Macao. (During the past fifteen years, the anti-Communist “Refugee Relief Association” has aided about 110,000 refugees from mainland China with money, clothing and jobs.) They pledged also that all refugees who escape from the mainland into Macao shall be sent back across the border and handed over to the Chinese authorities. Thus Macao, which in the past always prided itself on its magnanimity, sacrificed its traditional neutrality and will be a haven of refugees no more. Lost also is its value as a source of intelligence for “China watchers.” One important reason for the capitulation, apart from Peking’s political blackmail, was the pressure exerted by local Chinese millionaires who run the big businesses of gold import, greyhound racing and gambling. According to reliable sources, the two million-odd patacas in compensation was shelled out by these “leftist capitalists” who believed that surrender to the Reds was less detrimental to Macao’s economy and that, anyway, their “losses” could be receuped within a few months. Economically, Macao depends on mainland China for the bulk of its food supply. A protracted blockage of food and other daily necessities would be as efficient as an invasion. The Chinese Communists have successfully used the riots to blackmail Portugal and to reap a political harvest. So although theoretically sovereignty lies with the Portuguese authorities, the strings will now be pulled by Peking, and Macao virtually exists at the sufferance of Red China.