MACAO: A Time for Circumspection

From Macao, Portuguese colony on the China coast, last week TIME Correspondent Wilson Fielder cabled:

From his banyan-shaded terrace, friendly, fleshy, Albano Oliveira, governor of Portugal’s tiny colony of Macao, watched purple-sailed junks sailing in from nearby China. He recalled a passage written more than 200 years ago by an English visitor.

“Macao subsists merely by sufferance of the Chinese, who can starve the place and dispossess the Portuguese whenever they please. This obliges the governor to behave with great circumspection and carefully to avoid every circumstance that may give offense to the Chinese.”

Last week, as the Red armies of China swept unopposed across the Pearl River Delta, chasing ragged anti-Communist forces toward the Macao line, Oliveira realized he must behave with greater circumspection than any governor before him. The gunfire of China’s war was audible in the Portuguese colony. Through Porta do Cêrco, the massive, yellow brick border gate, poured panicky peasants and deserting Nationalist soldiers, clamoring for haven from the advancing Reds. Black sentries from Mozambique allowed them to pass, first stripping the deserters of weapons. By week’s end, over Pak-sha-leang, a Chinese fort overlooking the single road into Macao, the gold-starred Red flag of Communist China waved ominously.

A Time for Questions. A unique blend of Mediterranean and Oriental cultures, Macao is the Far East’s oldest European colony. It is smaller than Manhattan, and its population (300,000), mostly Chinese, is less than Newark’s. Four centuries ago, it became Europe’s first port in China. In the 19th Century it was eclipsed by Hong Kong, which is four hours southeast by steamship. It fell into a somnolent decadence, lived shabbily on gambling and other shady practices, until even in the Portuguese homeland it became known as the shameful “city of sin and opium.”

Were Macao’s days now numbered? Would the Chinese Reds seize it? Back in Lisbon, Premier Salazar said: “It remains to be seen whether reason will be able to avoid violence and whether the path of respect, of rights and of conciliation of interests can be found.” More than a month ago, Lisbon sent reinforcements to Governor Oliveira’s garrison.

Now at a peak strength of 5,000 men, Macao’s defenders crowd the little colony so that it appears armed to the teeth. But, as one high officer observed: “It’s just a face-saving army. We don’t have enough men to stop anything at the border, and too many for the simple job of keeping order in the city.”

Whistling in the Dark? Unlike the British in Hong Kong, the Portuguese say they have little to fear from agitation inside the colony. For years there has been a small Communist cell in Macao, perhaps 200 intellectuals, mostly doctors, lawyers and teachers. “We have them spotted,” said a Portuguese police official. “They loathe to mix with the lower classes, so we don’t have to worry too much about them.” On China’s “Double Tenth” only six Communist flags flew in Macao, despite the fact that the colony has one factory openly manufacturing the flags for export.

Most of Macao’s population, swollen by refugees from China, seems to care little about politics. Chief worry is the cost of living, which has soared 50% since the fall of Canton to the Reds. The Communists could easily cut the road through Porta do Cêrco and thus destroy the colony’s food lifeline. Yet no one seems alarmed. Civil servants remember how half a million people crammed into the peninsula during the Japanese war. Now, they point out, most refugees are middle-class and small-fry Nationalist bureaucrats who have some savings with them. Even though Portugal has stubbornly refused to recognize any Communist government, Macao feels that the Chinese Reds cannot be so tough as the Japanese. “After all,” colonials agree, “we were able to live by smuggling then. Why not again?”

Smuggling & Sentimentality. Meanwhile, Macao makes a living in gold and cigarettes. Both may enter freely, and both must leave with smugglers, for whom the authorities blandly turn their heads. Before the Reds moved into South China, the government used to collect some 30,000 patacas (more than $6,000 U.S.) daily on cigarette excise taxes alone. Gold was flowing through Macao’s banks (controlled by licenses purchased from the government) to China, Southeast Asia and Hong Kong at the rate of $27 million U.S. monthly.

The opium trade was outlawed in 1945, is now almost nonexistent. A few addicts are rounded up each month, promptly rushed to hospitals and treated at government expense. Gambling, however, is still a monopoly sold each year by the government to the highest bidder.

Every evening on the four floors of the noisy Central Hotel, trimly tailored women crowd shabby old men for a chance to bet on a three dice game or on fantan. In the hotel’s Golden Gate Restaurant, customers may bet while they eat by sending girl runners to place their money on the gaming tables. A big electric Scoreboard flashes the winning numbers in red & white lights each time the dice roll. In the Rua da Felicidade (Happiness Street), sweaty ricksha coolies dash into less fashionable gambling halls for quick bets between fares in hopes of doubling their meager pay.

Governor Oliveira is sentimentally hopeful that Portugal’s rundown remnant of empire can carry on despite its new Red neighbors. “Macao,” he said, “has always been a place of refuge, a place of peace.” Some colonial oldtimers console each other: “Nothing ever happens to Macao.” But others, more realistic, mutter: “Without food or trade, we are stuck.” They know what is in store if the Communists choose to make things happen.