"Macao Survives Precariously As 2-way Window to China"

Roy Essoyan da Associated Press assina este artigo - "Macao Survives Precariously As 2-way Window to China" - publicado na edição de 26 de Março de 1959 do jornal Toledo Blade.

Excerto:

"East meets West and capitalist meets Communist at this Portuguese colony on the thresh-old of Red China. (...) It is one of the last remaining windows into communist China. But Macao is so small and China so big that the Portuguese authorities here take no chances. They don't allow much peeking through the window". (...)

MACAO (AP) — East meets West and capitalist meets Communist at this Portuguese colony on the threshold of Red China.

Established more than 400 years ago, Macao is the oldest colony in the Far East. You can drive around it, without hurrying, in 20 minutes. It's a tiny dot on the tip of a peninsula in the Pearl River delta practically lost in the shadow of Red China.

It is one of the last remaining windows into Communist China. But Macao is so small and China so big that the Portuguese authorities here take no chances. They don't allow much peeking through the window.

A few enterprising souls make a precarious living peddling rumors out of Red China, but the authorities crack down on them periodically and banish them from the colony.

Almost everything about Macao today is precarious. Militarily, it is defenseless. Chinese Communist troops could march in and take it over at will. They haven't so far, some observers think, because Macao serves them, too, as a window — to the West.

Politically, Portugal does not recognize Red China, but in practice the Chinese Communists dominate life in Macao. The colony's water supply and all its meat and vegetables come from Red China. Communists own three of Macao's four Chinese language newspapers and operate one of the biggest and most influential banks. The 200,000 population is infiltrated with Communists.

Border guards man the highway checkpoint and patrol the narrow strip of water separating the colony from Communist territory. Sight-seers are kept a safe distance from the border, and anyone flashing a camera stands a good chance of losing it. But refugees from Red China who manage to sneak across the open fields or swim past Chinese and Portuguese patrol boats are granted political asylum. The Chinese Nationalist government maintains a refugee camp for them in Macao.

Macao has given political asylum to hundreds of thousands of refugees in its 400 year history, and thrived on it. When Japanese troops invaded China in 1937, refugees flocked to Macao. After Pearl Harbor the poor and the wealthy poured in from nearby Hong Kong, and 1949 brought another tide of refugees, both ragged and rich, fleeing communism in China.

Those were boom days in Macao and the colony supported eight flourishing gambling dens, plus night clubs and cabarets. Today the tide of refugees has dropped to a trickle and Macao’s gambling houses, barometer of the colony’s prosperity, have dropped with them.

Two remain, and one of them caters mainly to ricksha coolies and amahs clutching the equivalent of nickels and dimes. Macao’s main casino, which occupies five floors of the central hotel on Macao’s main street, works around the clock.

As with almost everything else in Macao, the glamour has faded out of gambling. The big money comes rarely these days and most of the customers are none-too-wealthy local tradesmen and politicians or budget-conscious visitors from Hong Kong. Movie star Curt Jurgens, on location here for the movie "Ferry to Hong Kong," broke the bank recently and walked off with about $3,000. But things are so tough in Macao now that the next time Mr. Jurgens walked in, the house promptly placed a limit on bets.

Macao’s other industries have fallen on evil days too. The colony still sells an estimated $1,050,000 worth of firecrackers and matches a year, but that’s the only industry that has kept its head above water.

Fishing, once one of the main sources of income, has been restricted by prowling Communist patrol boats.

Even the smuggling business isn't what it used to be. It is still sufficiently well organized for underground operators to offer first, second and third class smuggling accommodations for political refugees from Red China, but the operators complain the gross has dropped sharply. And the gold smugglers, who used to make a handy profit smuggling gold from Macao, a free port, to Hong Kong are running into improved methods of detection in the British crown colony.