Macau Welcomes Chinese Rule

MACAU -- Kwok Lap-bo says he's been staying away from bars and karaoke clubs because he wants to avoid trouble with gangsters. He's also worried his two children, aged 7 and 8, might start running with the wrong crowd.


Kwok is totally fed up with the mobsters who have run out of control in the Portuguese enclave of Macau, turning it into a shooting gallery where 39 people have been assassinated this year alone.


The 37-year-old electronics store owner is hardly alone in figuring Macau's return to China at midnight Sunday might finally offer the enclave's 430,000 people f most of them Chinese f a better future.


"There's been a sense of terror living in Macau,'' said Kwok. "It's good that the handover is right around the corner. Otherwise, it would be total chaos here."


As Lisbon prepares to return Macau to China after 442 years, comparisons with Britain's surrender of neighboring Hong Kong in July 1997 are inevitable.


There are many similarities, to be sure, but the differences are greater. Hong Kong is far more important economically than Macau, a sleepy gambling outpost that has gained attention lately mainly through its frequent gangland assassinations.


When Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty, most local residents weren't looking forward to the change.


At the time, Hong Kong's economy was at a peak. The world-class financial center boasts a clean and efficient civil service, an active independent press, the rule of law embedded in a British-style judiciary and an active democracy movement defending citizens' core rights.


Many Hong Kong people worried Chinese sovereignty would rock the smooth-sailing boat, and communist Beijing would eventually trample on civil liberties. The fear for tighter control led to a "brain drain'' of middle class professionals to the West.


Hong Kong, a British colony for 156 years, became a Special Administrative Region of China in July 1997 with guaranteed autonomy under the so-called one country, two systems arrangement.


Macau, a tiny enclave 64 kilometers west of Hong Kong, will follow suit as Portugal abandons the last piece of its former empire. Macau, too, will be a Special Administrative Region of China, with a great deal of autonomy and more freedom for its citizens than those enjoyed by people on the mainland.


While Britain took Hong Kong as a trophy after the Chinese-British Opium War, China handed Macau to the Portuguese in 1557, by some accounts as a reward for fighting pirates. China and Portugal never went to war.


After all these centuries, Portugal leaves behind the legacy of a colorful hybrid culture, most visible in its architecture and cuisine, and a friendly and laid-back lifestyle f a stark contrast from the swashbuckling ways of the aggressive capitalists in Hong Kong, which often is ridiculed as a cultural desert.


But Portugal will also leave behind a trail of woes, which most locals blame on poor management by the Portuguese.


The economy, far less developed and diverse than Hong Kong's, relies heavily on its casino industry.


Along with gambling came organized crime, which has escalated in recent years as Asia's financial crisis dried up casino profits and left local mobsters fighting a vicious turf war.


Incoming Chief Executive Edmund Ho, a Macau banker, has pledged to restore order. Beijing also hopes the presence of People's Liberation Army troops will help stamp out organized crime. It will station a small garrison in Macau and a larger contingent in the bordering Chinese town of Zhuhai.


"I hope security would be better, so that normal citizens could have peace of mind,'' said secretary Anita Cheung, 33.


Some Macau people say they're even willing to see some of their rights compromised if that translates into better security. Others say they look to Hong Kong's success as a guarantee that Beijing will refrain from undue interference.