Located west of the Pearl River estuary in Guangdong
Province, 40 nautical miles west of Hong Kong, Macao’s
23.5 sq km of territory comprises the Macao Peninsula, Taipa
Island and Coloane Island and is inhabited by about 450,000
people. Macao has been a part of Chinese territory since
ancient times. When Emperor Qin Shi Huang unified China in
the third century B.C., Macao was formally included in
China’s territory and became a part of Fanyu County,
Nanhai Prefecture; later it was included in Xiangshan County
(today’s Zhongshan City). In 1553, the Portuguese
bribed local government officials in Guangdong to gain
permission to drop anchor in Macao’s harbor and engage
in trade. In 1557, the Portuguese began to settle nearby. In
the period following the Opium War of 1840, taking advantage
of the weakness of the Qing government, the Portuguese
successively seized Taipa and Coloane islands to the south
of the Macao Peninsula. In 1887, the Portuguese government
forced the Qing government to sign the “Draft
Agreement of the Sino-Portuguese Meeting” and
subsequently the “Sino-Portuguese Treaty of
Peking,” providing that “Portugal will
administer Macao and subordinate areas in perpetuity, as any
other region governed by Portugal.” Since then,
Portugal has occupied Macao.
The Chinese
people have never recognized those unequal treaties. The
government of the PRC has repeatedly stated the facts that
Macao has always been a part of Chinese territory, and that
the Macao issue is a question left over by history. China
has consistently maintained that at the appropriate time a
peaceful, negotiated solution to this problem inherited from
the past should be found. When diplomatic relations were
established between China and Portugal in 1979, the
Portuguese government recognized Macao as Chinese territory,
and the two sides agreed that the question of Macao should
be solved through bilateral negotiations in due time.
Between June 1986 and March 1987, delegations from the two
governments held four rounds of talks. Finally, on April 13,
1987, the “Joint Declaration on the Question of Macao
by the
Governments of the
People’s Republic of China and the Republic of
Portugal” was formally signed in Beijing. The Joint
Declaration includes the formulation: “The Government
of the People’s Republic of China will resume
sovereignty over Macao effective December 20, 1999.”
On December 20, 1999, the Chinese and Portuguese governments
held a hand-over ceremony as scheduled, marking the
resumption of sovereignty by China over Macao. At the same
time, the Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR) was
formally established, and the Basic Law of the Macao Special
Administrative Region, adopted in March 1993 at the First
Session of the Eighth National People’s Congress, came
into effect.
When the MSAR is officially
founded, the Chinese government will carry out the basic
policies of “one country, two systems,”
“administration of Macao by the Macao people”
and “a high degree of autonomy” in Macao. The
MSAR shall enjoy a high degree of autonomy, and its
political, economic, cultural and educational systems shall
be similar to those of the HKSAR. The Chief Excutive of the
MSAR is HO Hau-Wah.
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