MACAU — When Macau, the Portuguese colony turned Chinese gambling hub, got a new chief executive in October, the vote by an electoral committee was unanimous. He ran unopposed. No one took to the streets in protest.

When young activists applied for permission to demonstrate in support of the protest movement in nearby Hong Kong, the authorities said no — four times. When a few dozen showed up anyway in Macau’s historic center in August, the police arrested seven of them.

Macau today, like Hong Kong, is a political experiment that began in the late 1990s, when China reclaimed both territories from Western colonial powers and promised that civil liberties could coexist with its brand of authoritarian rule. Now, as Hong Kong’s political unrest continues, China’s ruling Communist Party has become increasingly explicit about how much it will tolerate under that formula — and holds Macau up as a shining example of obedience.

“The most important thing is to implement and safeguard the central government’s full control,” Li Zhanshu, the third highest-ranking official in China, who presides over policy for both territories, said in a speech about Macau in Beijing this month.