In the end, the British left behind more than 10 times that amount. The Chinese never made any similar demands of their good friend Portugal, with the result that the Portuguese are leaving not a penny in reserves for Macau. Moreover, while the British spent the 13 years of the transition period leading up to the handover grooming local Chinese to take over top posts in the government and the judiciary, the Portuguese have done Edmund Ho, the incoming chief executive, said in a statement issued to mark the 100-day countdown to the return of Chinese sovereignty that rooting out crime and rebuilding a stable society will be his top priorities after assuming office. As a result, there are few local Chinese in Macau with high-level administrative government experience. The future Chief Executive, Edmund Ho, will have to make do with what human resources there are, but there is general agreement that the quality of Macau's top civil servants doesn't come close to the local civil servants who have assumed the top jobs in Hong Kong.
Language is also a major problem.
Because top offices were all reserved for Portuguese, there was little incentive for locals to learn the Portuguese language. But the Macau Basic Law says that both Portuguese and Chinese will be official languages in Macau. Portugal is also saying that since the legal system will continue to be the one introduced from Portugal, future court cases should be primarily conducted in Portuguese. It is difficult to see how that can happen, since so few people in Macau know Portuguese. To do so will mean training young Chinese in the Portuguese language, and in Portuguese law, so that court cases can be conducted in a language incomprehensible to the majority of the population.