China's Macao Transformed: Challenge and Development in the 21st Century

Eilo W. Y. Yu and Ming K. Chan (eds), China's Macao Transformed: Challenge and Development in the 21st Century, Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong Press, 2014, 412 pp.Books dealing with current affairs in Macao, whatever the language, do not come often; good publications about Macao are even rarer. At least three sets of reasons can explain this dearth of academic production. First, the Special Administrative Region is small - 650,000 inhabitants on a land area of slightly more than 30 sq. km - and thus does not attract much attention, as its relevance within the broader perspective of China's evolution is considered marginal and is clearly over-shadowed by Hong Kong's more sophisticated, buoyant, and challenging development. Second, it is commonly acknowledged that starting in 1967, in the wake of the "12.3" incident, Macao's polity, even under the Portuguese colonial administration, has yielded to the People's Republic of China's views on its future, and thus any publication regarding Macao somehow constitutes an update of that deferential position - hence not requiring frequent repetition. And third, sources and surveys, when available and/or funded, often exclude one another: government-sponsored research in social sciences is rarely made public and often gets trapped in excessive praise or un-analytical rebarbative descriptions, while more critical writings, when firmly grounded in first-hand and meaningful investigation, often address segmented narrow issues.The edited volume published by the City University of Hong Kong somehow comes as a counterpoint to these assumptions, thus showing that Macao is indeed a wonderful laboratory for social sciences, not only in itself but also within the Chinese "living tree," according to the expression of Tu Weiming, and as an embodiment of the "one country-two systems" formula in particular, and a case study of "partial sovereignty" in general. This book is therefore a must-read for anybody with an interest in Macao. Moreover, being a collective work divided into five sections - a long introductory and contrasted first part (105 pages by four authors! ), followed by the usual politics, socio-economic issues, socio-cultural concerns, and finally external relations comprised of 15 contributions - this volume easily allows for browsing and selecting among very diverse takes. To choose but one example, the admirable final chapter authored by Cathryn Clayton on "Macao Local, Macao Global" acts as a conclusive and far-reaching reflection on the hybrid nature of Macao today, but it will also be of great interest to scholars of globalisation and identity-building alike. The great merits of this publication cannot be stressed enough: first of all because this is the end-product of various seminars and conferences held in Lisbon, Canada, Hong Kong, and Macao starting in 2009; and second because it is one of the few, if not only, truly academic publications released in 2014 in English on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the handover. In this age of excessive celebration for everything and anything, this very fact speaks volumes about the precious character of the whole enterprise.But being a collective endeavour also has the usual drawbacks, which deserve to be stressed. If one cannot blame the book for not being comprehensive, there are several important "loopholes": Bill Chou's chapter on public sector reform is well-rounded, but an additional contribution on public services would have been welcome; then, when it comes to external relations, Macao's place in international organisations or as a signatory to international covenants and agreements deserves attention, and clearly the connection to Europe goes beyond Portugal and Portuguese-speaking countries, even though Jose Carlos Matias' essay on the latter is - as usual - very thorough. …