China-Taiwan-Portugal Relations and Macau in Cultural Revolution: a Year of Advance, Withdrawal and Isolation
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China-Taiwan-Portugal Relations and Macau in Cultural Revolution: a Year of Advance, Withdrawal and Isolation Bill Chou 1 Received: 13 August 2019 / Accepted: 12 February 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Macau is a window to understand the struggle between China and Taiwan in foreign territories. Located at the doorstep of a giant nation, the Portuguese administration in Macau was once successful in striking a balance between Taiwan which maintained diplomatic relations with Portugal until 1975 on the one hand, and China, a communist regime that Portugal opposed on the other. The overspill of Cultural Revolution to Macau in 1966 and 1967 destructed the delicate balance. The 1966 “December 3 incident” and the aftermath were celebrated by pro-Beijing social elites as a victory of patriotic movement against oppressive colonialism. This came at a cost of Macau’s isolation from the major Chinese communities outside China, namely Taiwan and Hong Kong. The political radicalization was followed by expulsion of the proTaiwan elements, eviction of British and Hong Kong establishments and erosion of Portuguese sovereignty over Macau. The impact on Macau’s political social development lingered for decades. Keywords China . Taiwan . Portugal . Macau . 1966 and 1967 riots . Cultural revolution
Introduction Hong Kong was an outpost for the Western World to contain the spread of Communism and the overspill of Cultural Revolution. It often overshadowed Macau, its neighbouring city 50km west of it owing to the strong presence of Western force in Hong Kong for collecting, sharing and spreading intelligence on China. There are insufficient bilingual (Portuguese and Chinese) historians who have developed a research interest in Macau, and are independent from the influence of Beijing which
* Bill Chou [email protected]
1
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
East Asia
has incentive to cover up the historical disgrace committed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As a result, there is a lack of documentation and publication of the history about Macau, including the period when Cultural Revolution was in full swing. Macau in 1967 merits more attention from the scholars who are interested in the comparative politics of Hong Kong and Macau, China-Taiwan relations, Portugal’s colonial history and different fronts of Cold War. The 1966 and 1967 riots in Macau inspired the pro-Beijing leftist in Hong Kong to organize a larger scale of struggle against the colonial administration in mid-1967. The victory of Macau leftists but the defeat of their Hong Kong counterparts led to the departure of the two colonies’ historical trajectory: Sweeping social reform could be launched in Hong Kong after the British colonial government secured its rule. In Macau, the defeat of the colonial government forced it to share the power with the leftists responsible to Beijing, and consequently, the governance of the colonies could hardly be effective. Meanwhile, pro-Taiwan forces and British consulate withdrew from Macau after the ri
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