Macau has a weaker civil society and sense of local identity than Hong Kong, analysts say. The city has always been more compliant than Hong Kong and passed national security legislation in 2009 which, when floated in Hong Kong in 2003, brought half a million people on to the streets and persuaded the local government to scrap the bill.

“The Macau model will take at least 20 to 30 years to realise in Hong Kong,” says Lo. “And I don’t think even 30 years will be enough.”

Since sweeping to power six years ago, Xi has tightened his political grip across China, including through the steady erosion of the one country, two systems framework in Macau and the freedoms it allows, say academics, lawyers and journalists.

We’ve really felt Beijing ramping up the pressure in Macau because they are terrified the Hong Kong protests will spill over. — Icy Kam, head of pro-democracy group the New Macau Association

“In theory we can criticise the government, but in reality we don’t,” says one veteran Chinese journalist in Macau who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We’ve learnt that criticising the [Macau] government, the Chinese Communist Party and Beijing only brings us trouble. They can pull advertising or send the triads to beat us up; it’s been really bad since Xi came to power.”

The authorities in Macau did not respond to requests for comment.

“Over the past six months, we’ve really felt Beijing ramping up the pressure in Macau because they are terrified the Hong Kong protests will spill over,” says Kam.

Local activists have tried to hold demonstrations in Macau in support of the Hong Kong protests on four separate occasions this year. All were banned, including one against alleged police brutality. Macau’s Court of Final Appeal ruled in September that allowing such a demonstration would interfere with Hong Kong’s internal affairs.

“The ruling was totally absurd. If a group of people want to demonstrate in favour of or against the police, they are not interfering in decisions made by the Hong Kong government,” says Paulo Cardinal, who was the chief legal adviser specialising in constitutional affairs in Macau’s Legislative Assembly for 26 years before his contract was cancelled last year. “This is the first time we saw a CFA decision rely on such weak legal grounds. It’s a decision that worried many in Macau’s legal and academic communities.”


Neither Hong Kong nor Macau has universal suffrage, so freedom of protest plays an outsized role in enabling residents to voice their discontent. The last large-scale protest in Macau, in 2014 against lavish retirement packages for top officials, forced the then chief executive to withdraw the proposal.

Cardinal and Paulo Taipa, who was the chief legal adviser on gaming laws, were both dismissed last year by Ho Iat Seng, the then head of Macau’s legislature, who said their departures were due to “restructuring”. Ho, the sole candidate to run for chief executive this year, will be formally sworn in as Macau’s leader on December 20, the 20th anniversary of Macau’s handover. Xi is expected to attend the ceremony to announce policies aimed at diversifying the gambling hub’s economy into a financial centre.

“The two Paulos were excellent, brilliant advisers. These were political sackings, no doubt about it,” says Menezes. “Neither of them were able to find jobs anywhere in Macau afterwards, not at casinos, not in the government, not in law firms, not at universities.”

Taipa, who helped write many of Macau’s gaming laws in the 1990s, is now an adviser to the Portuguese government.

“How could Paulo Taipa not find a job in a casino? He’s one of the best gaming lawyers in Macau. It’s because the casinos were all afraid because politics and business are one and the same here,” says Menezes, who has brought cases including for breach of contract against casino groups in Macau such as Sands, Galaxy and Wynn.

The Macau government did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2013 Menezes was the victim of a premeditated attack as he walked his son to school. The assault, which he blames on the triads, almost cost him his life. One person was convicted and Menezes subsequently moved his family to Portugal. “The police never investigated the person who ordered the attack because this person was too powerful to be investigated,” says the lawyer.

The Macau police did not respond to a request for comment.

The people in power in Macau are more loyal than the king himself and will go an extra step just to please the powers that be. — Eric Sautede, politics professor sacked from a university in Macau


Aside from attacks on lawyers and the rule of law, Macau has witnessed a rapid rise in the use of security legislation, surveillance technology including facial recognition, and police powers. Multiple pro-democracy lawmakers, lawyers, activists and scholars from Hong Kong have been barred from entering the territory.

Immigration officials in Macau even blocked a baby who shares the same name as someone on the blacklist. Two senior figures from the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong were also prevented from entering Macau this month following the passage of legislation in Washington to scrutinise China’s human rights record in Hong Kong.

“The people in power in Macau are more loyal than the king himself and will go an extra step just to please the powers that be. It happens all the time,” says Eric Sautede, a politics professor sacked in 2014 from a university in Macau for expressing his political views. “I was told that my outspokenness was preventing the university from receiving $HK50 million ($9.3 million) of government funding to develop part of the campus.”

Macau’s 1966 riots – an anti-colonial uprising influenced by the Cultural Revolution – are now widely seen as a victory for the Chinese Communist Party, with the Portuguese authorities in effect succumbing to Beijing and the CCP chapter in Macau becoming the territory’s de facto rulers. Similar riots the following year in Hong Kong resulted in a different outcome: the British colonial government consolidated its power.

Finally, we had someone who Beijing could not control. — A veteran of Macau’s Legislative Assembly, speaking of young MP Sulu Sou

As a result, says Ching Cheong, a veteran China watcher, Macau’s mini constitution, known as the Basic Law, has no provision outlining a path towards universal suffrage, in contrast to Hong Kong’s version of the legislation.

Critics say a small and weak opposition party has further hindered the development of a vibrant civil society. Some in Macau’s pro-democracy camp are now looking to Sulu Sou, the youngest legislator ever elected in Macau, in 2017. Aged 28, Sou rose to prominence when he organised the 2014 protest against the perks bill.

“The first time I saw Sulu Sou on the floor of the Legislative Assembly I thought to myself, ‘where have you been all my life?’,” says a veteran of Macau’s Legislative Assembly who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Finally, we had someone who Beijing could not control. He is truly free and remarkably intelligent and Beijing is terrified of him.”

Sou was the first MP to be stripped of his duties since Macau’s handover after being charged over his involvement in an unauthorised protest in 2016. Although found guilty, he was reinstated.


“The young generation here isn’t like the young generation in Hong Kong,” says Sou, who studied public administration at National Taiwan University. “Most of them don’t know about the importance of critical thinking, democracy and the protection of human rights.”

More than half of Macau’s residents were born in mainland China and a University of Hong Kong survey conducted in 2018 showed a strong sense of identity as citizens of the People’s Republic. A separate HKU poll found the number of people in Hong Kong who identified only as Chinese dropped to a record low in 2019.

“The most important event in Macau over the past 20 years has been the way it has improved its social welfare policies to deal with the excesses of casino capitalism, which is highly exploitative and highly socially divisive,” says Lo, the political scientist.

Cash handouts

Since 2008, Macau has offered annual cash handouts to its residents. Those who live there permanently received 10,000 patacas ($1813) each in 2019.

But many in Macau, where unemployment is less than 2 per cent, still feel they have not been able to share in the city’s rapid economic growth, according to Sou, and Kam, as inadequate and unaffordable housing, poor public transport and skyrocketing medical costs – among the same ingredients that have fuelled the anger in Hong Kong – remain problems.

“If Beijing thinks 100 per cent control over society means it has been successful, this is a good lesson for the people of Hong Kong,” says Sou.

“Despite having a national security law and being totally obedient to Beijing, we still don’t have universal suffrage here. Why obey Beijing when Macau, the so-called ‘good student’, doesn’t get good results?”

With Nicolle Liu and Qianer Liu

– Financial Times

— Financial Times