China, Portugal to Hold Talks on Returning Macao Colony to Peking’s Control

In 1967, when China’s Cultural Revolution began to make trouble for the tiny Portuguese outpost of Macao, Portugal offered to vacate the colony on China’s southeast coast within a month. Peking officials told Macao’s Portuguese governor to relax and stay put.

During the 1970s, after a Socialist government committed to decolonization came to power in Lisbon, it twice volunteered to hand back Macao to the Chinese. Each time, China’s response was the same: Thanks, but no thanks.

On Thursday, for the first time, China finally signaled its willingness to take control of Macao and end four centuries of Portuguese rule in the six-square-mile territory. After the British give up Hong Kong, Macao would be the last vestige of European imperial rule on the Chinese mainland.

In a carefully worded communique issued during a visit here by Portuguese President Antonio Ramalho Eanes, China and Portugal announced that they have “agreed to hold talks in the near future on resolving the question of Macao.”

No Date Specified

The communique did not specify when the talks would be held or other details. Eanes, sounding a bit like someone in the midst of an amicable divorce, told a press conference here that Portugal will turn over Macao to China “when we (Portugal and China) both feel it is the right moment.”

Significantly, the future of Macao was not linked in any way to that of Hong Kong, its bigger and more prosperous neighbor 40 miles to the east, which will be allowed to maintain its capitalist system and civil liberties after the British relinquish control in 1997.

Eanes said it is unclear until after negotiations between Portugal and China start whether Macao will be given the same special political status and guarantees that were granted to Hong Kong.

Macao was once the main entry point to China for the European powers as they sought to expand their trade in Asia. In recent years, the Portuguese enclave, a short hydrofoil ride from Hong Kong, has been best known for its 24-hour gambling casinos and its sleepy ambiance.

Nothing could better exemplify the difference between the governments of China and Macao than their census policies.

95% Are Chinese

China, the most populous nation in the world, makes it a practice to know as much as possible about its citizens and reported in 1982 that it has a population of exactly 1,031,882,511. The population of Macao, one of the world’s smaller colonies, is variously estimated at somewhere between 350,000 and 450,000.

More than 95% of Macao’s population is Chinese. The colony also includes several thousand people known as Macanese--Portuguese-speaking Eurasians.

Both the Chinese and the Macanese are entitled to Portuguese citizenship and passports. In this respect, they are in a much better position than the 5 million residents of Hong Kong, where even Chinese with British nationality are not allowed to emigrate to Britain.

In fact, Macao has always operated in a different way from Hong Kong. The Portuguese did not obtain the colony through force, but through settlement. In 1557, the colony was formally established on land rented from China.

There is no dispute over sovereignty in Macao, as there was between China and Britain over Hong Kong. Portugal has freely acknowledged that although Macao is under what is called “Portuguese administration,” it is legally Chinese territory.

For decades, authorities in Peking were content to leave Portugal in charge of Macao for the same reasons that they left the British in Hong Kong. Macao provided China with a source of foreign exchange and an outlet for trade and contact with the outside world.

Over the past few years, China simply put Macao on the back burner while it negotiated with the British over Hong Kong. The aim was to avoid taking any action on Macao that would alarm residents or businesses in Hong Kong.

Late last fall, after the Hong Kong agreement was signed, Portuguese officials questioned Chinese President Li Xiannian about Macao’s future during Li’s visit to Portugal.

Eanes, the Portuguese president, confessed Thursday that Macao had not been on the official agenda prepared for his visit to China this week but that the Chinese officials had raised the issue.