The Macau handover: Portugal's last flag in China comes down, 1999

The ceremony began at about eleven on the night of Sunday 19 December 1999, in a pavilion built for the occasion beside the Macao Cultural Centre. Some 2,500 invited guests sat under the flags of Portugal and China, which fans hidden in the flagpoles kept fluttering as if in a sea breeze. Outside, rain kept most of Macau's 430,000 or so residents at home.3 sources3 sources

Jiang Zemin, China's president, had flown in from Zhuhai, just across the border, while the last Mass under Portuguese administration was said in the cathedral. Jorge Sampaio, Portugal's president, spoke of the ties between the two countries. João de Pina-Cabral, an anthropologist who had written a book on Macau's Eurasians and sat among the guests, heard him call it the ceremony that marked the last of the Portuguese empire, ending a story that had begun in the early fifteenth century.2 sources2 sources

Then the Portuguese anthem played and the green and red flag came down for the last time. Pina-Cabral noticed that the Lisbon television commentator standing next to him was sobbing into a handkerchief. On the stage, General Vasco Rocha Vieira, the last governor, held the folded flag in his arms. When he died in January 2025, Portugal's parliament recalled that picture as the one the Portuguese remember.3 sources3 sources

At midnight the red flag of the People's Republic went up, and Jiang stepped to the podium. A translucent building put up for the night glowed green, then turned red. In Senado Square, the old heart of the city, the crowd cheered as the Chinese anthem played.2 sources2 sources

Macau, a peninsula and two islands, Taipa and Coloane, on the south China coast, had been home to a Portuguese community for about four and a half centuries. Its handover, as Miguel Santos Neves wrote that month for Lisbon's Institute of Strategic and International Studies, closed Portugal's colonial cycle and ended the last colony in Asia.2 sources2 sources

Portuguese ships had been trading in the Pearl River estuary since Jorge Álvares reached the island of Tamão in 1513. Ming court records place some Portuguese at Haojing as early as 1535, though that name probably meant the nearby islands rather than the peninsula. The Chinese name Aomen, for the peninsula, first appears in a memorial to the emperor of 1564.3 sources3 sources

When the Portuguese moved onto the peninsula is still argued. A Ming gazetteer of 1602 gives 1553, and so does the Macao government's official history: local officials let the Portuguese stay, it says, after they claimed they needed land to dry out goods that had been soaked. The Chinese historian Tang Kaijian argues for 1554, with the stay becoming more official in 1557.2 sources2 sources

The earliest known use of the name Macau in a European language is in a letter dated 20 November 1555. Portuguese tradition settled on 1557, generally accepted as the year the Portuguese were allowed to settle, reportedly as a reward for helping Chinese officials against pirates. That date produced the “442 years” in the reports of 1999.4 sources4 sources

Sovereignty was never in doubt to the Chinese. From about 1573 the Portuguese paid an annual ground rent, usually given as 500 taels, and in 1583 they were allowed to form a Senate to run their own affairs. Ming and then Qing officials kept soldiers, customs posts and taxes in Macau. For nearly 300 years it was a Portuguese-run town on Chinese soil.2 sources2 sources

The balance shifted after Britain took Hong Kong in the Opium War. The Portuguese pressed for more, including an end to the ground rent, and gradually took control of the whole peninsula. João Maria Ferreira do Amaral, governor from 1846, closed Chinese customs houses and was assassinated on 22 August 1849. His statue would become one of the most disputed objects in the city.3 sources3 sources

Portugal got its legal title in 1887. A protocol agreed in Lisbon that March, signed by the foreign minister Henrique de Barros Gomes and by James Duncan Campbell for the Chinese government, stated in its second article that “China confirms the perpetual occupation and government of Macao and its dependencies by Portugal”. In the third, Portugal promised never to give Macau away without China's agreement.2 sources2 sources

A treaty signed in Peking that December, and ratified in 1888, confirmed the protocol. It never fixed Macau's borders: China always avoided defining what the “dependencies” were. Chinese accounts list it among the unequal treaties forced on the Qing dynasty.2 sources2 sources

China did not accept the arrangement for long. In 1928 its Nationalist government told Portugal it was ending the treaty, and after 1949 the People's Republic declared all such treaties void. Portugal stayed on regardless.1 source1 source

China's Cultural Revolution began in May 1966, and by November it had reached Macau. On 15 November, on Taipa, Rui de Andrade, the Macanese head of the islands' council, tried to stop pro-Communist residents building a primary school. Police were called and made arrests. On 30 November the People's Daily in Beijing and the Guangzhou press took up the cause.1 source1 source

On 3 December 1966 protests in the city turned into riots against the Portuguese administration, and the next day against supporters of Taiwan's Nationalists. Eight Chinese died. The disturbances are known as “12-3” or “1-2-3”, after the month and day. Rioters toppled the bronze statue of the soldier Vicente Nicolau de Mesquita near the Leal Senado, the city hall.4 sources4 sources

Guangdong province put O Cheng-peng, chairman of Nam Kwong, a Chinese state trading company in Macau, in charge of negotiating with the Portuguese. On 29 January 1967 the governor, Brigadier Nobre de Carvalho, signed two accords, one with Guangdong's foreign affairs bureau and one with Macau's Communist leaders.1 source1 source

From then until 1999, the historian Moisés Fernandes argues, Portugal ran Macau on Beijing's terms, with Nam Kwong acting as a shadow government. A senior official in Lisbon's overseas ministry said as much in March 1967 to the man being sent out as the governor's deputy.1 source1 source

Lisbon drew its own conclusion. According to Santos Neves, António de Oliveira Salazar's dictatorship quietly offered in 1967 to return Macau, to avoid a “second Goa”. China said no.1 source1 source

In 1971 the People's Republic took China's seat at the United Nations. On 9 March 1972 its ambassador, Huang Hua, wrote to the UN decolonisation committee that Hong Kong and Macau were Chinese territory occupied by the British and Portuguese, and that settling the question was China's business alone. That November the General Assembly took Macau off the list of colonies due for decolonisation.2 sources2 sources

Portugal's Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974 ended the dictatorship and brought a sharp change in colonial policy. In 1975, as part of the general decolonisation, Lisbon offered Macau back again. Beijing refused again, Santos Neves writes, mainly for fear of shaking confidence in Hong Kong, China's main window on the world. Zhou Enlai and other moderates also judged that, with China in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, it was the wrong moment for such a decision.2 sources2 sources

So Portugal relabelled Macau instead. From 1975 both governments treated it as a “Chinese territory under Portuguese administration”, and the 1976 Portuguese Constitution said Macau was not part of Portugal's territory, only under its administration. When the two countries established diplomatic relations on 8 February 1979, a then-secret understanding added that the question would be settled “when appropriate”.3 sources3 sources

Once Britain and China had settled Hong Kong in 1984, Macau was next. Formal talks opened on 30 June 1986, took four rounds, and produced an agreed text on 23 March 1987. Portugal had hoped for more time. Fernandes writes that President Mário Soares wanted the handover put back to 2007, 450 years after 1557, or even to 2057, and that the Chinese side rejected both.3 sources3 sources

Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva and Premier Zhao Ziyang signed the Joint Declaration in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on 13 April 1987, with Deng Xiaoping looking on. It came into force on 15 January 1988.2 sources2 sources

The formula was “one country, two systems”, an idea Deng had designed for Taiwan and first applied to Hong Kong. Macau would become a Special Administrative Region with a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign affairs and defence. Its social and economic systems, its laws and its way of life would stay basically unchanged for 50 years.2 sources2 sources

Portuguese could still be used in government, the legislature and the courts, and the interests of inhabitants of Portuguese descent were to be protected by law. China's National People's Congress wrote all this into the Basic Law on 31 March 1993. Its Article 5 says the capitalist system and way of life “shall remain unchanged for 50 years”, and Article 9 makes Portuguese an official language alongside Chinese.3 sources3 sources

Vasco Rocha Vieira, an army general from Lagoa with a degree in civil engineering, had served in Angola and in Macau before and had been army chief of staff from 1976 to 1978. He was minister of the Republic for the Azores from 1986 to 1991, then governed Macau until 1999.1 source1 source

A joint liaison group settled practical questions: a new international airport, the Bank of China as a note-issuing bank, the renewal of the casino franchise. The hardest were the three “localisations”: replacing Portuguese civil servants with local people, turning Portugal's laws into local law, and giving Chinese official status.1 source1 source

Symbols were negotiated too. Beijing's office for Hong Kong and Macau wanted Ferreira do Amaral's statue gone as a colonial symbol. On 28 October 1992 it came down and was shipped to Portugal.1 source1 source

Some questions were never settled. Macau's Justice Secretariat estimated that 110,000 people of Chinese origin held Portuguese citizenship, and the group most affected were the Macanese, who held both nationalities. China does not recognise dual nationality, so after the handover it would treat them as Chinese nationals.1 source1 source

The last years were violent. After Hong Kong's return in 1997, rival gangs fought over Macau, and the Associated Press reported that triads were blamed for at least 37 killings in 1999. The shooting stopped a month before the handover. On 15 May 1999 a 200-member selection committee chose the banker Edmund Ho Hau-wah, son of the business leader Ho Yin, as the first Chief Executive.3 sources3 sources

Pina-Cabral thought the politicians felt little for the city, with two exceptions: the outgoing governor and the incoming Chief Executive, in near-identical grey suits, for whom the night meant something personal. Macau's Portuguese-language paper Ponto Final described Rocha Vieira's last look at the governor's palace.2 sources2 sources

In Beijing, a selected crowd of 25,000 to 30,000 attended a midnight gala in Tiananmen Square, according to UPI and AP. In Macau police broke up a meditation protest by about 30 followers of Falun Gong outside the Hotel Lisboa and arrested four of them. Jiang used his speech to call for “complete national reunification” with Taiwan.2 sources2 sources

The garrison was a late sore point. Santos Neves noted that Beijing's decision to station troops in Macau, announced soon after Hong Kong's return, had caused a recent dispute with Portugal. The decision, he argued, had less to do with Macau than with Taiwan: it showed that the armed forces were a symbol of sovereignty China would not negotiate away.1 source1 source

Most of the Portuguese left with the administration. In the mid-1990s the Portuguese community had reached about 6,000 people, most of them civil servants. A year after the handover, Ponto Final reported, Portugal's consulate counted about 1,000 still there.1 source1 source

Macau itself grew. Its population rose from an estimated 430,500 in 1998 to 688,300 at the end of 2024, and land reclamation took its area from 23.6 to 33.3 square kilometres. Gambling tourism then remade the economy; Pina-Cabral dates the boom to 2002.3 sources3 sources

Portuguese kept its legal status but lost ground as a spoken language. In the 2001 census, 0.7 per cent of residents said it was their usual language; in the 2016 by-census, 0.6 per cent. Over the same years Mandarin rose from 1.6 to 5.3 per cent and English from 0.7 to 2.7 per cent, while Cantonese fell from 87.9 to 77.8 per cent.1 source1 source

The 50-year guarantee runs to 2049. Portuguese remains an official language, which the government, the legislature and the courts may use alongside Chinese.2 sources2 sources

On 15 July 2005 UNESCO inscribed the Historic Centre of Macao on its World Heritage List, China's 31st site. It covers eight squares, 22 historic buildings and the streets between them, where Chinese and Portuguese buildings, religious practices and customs mix, in a core zone of about 0.16 square kilometres.1 source1 source

The Macanese, the city's Eurasian community, have pushed to keep their own culture on the record. Their associations nominated Macanese cooking and theatre in Patuá, their Portuguese-based creole, to Macau's heritage list in 2011, and in June 2021 China added both to its national list. Patuá itself is considered almost extinct.2 sources2 sources

Portugal approached the transition, Santos Neves argued in 1999, with a “zero risk” strategy, because it saw Macau as a last chance to lay to rest the traumas of decolonisation in Africa.1 source1 source