This book takes a comprehensive look at the governance and civil society of Macao, the shadowy mecca of gambling in Asia, and the reforms, changes, and social movements which are challenging that reputation today. Thanks to the rapid expansion of the local casino industry, Macao has experienced spectacular economic growth since it returned to Chinese rule in 1999. Following double-digit rates of economic growth between 2002 and 2013, Macao has become one of the wealthiest regions in Asia, with GDP per capita rising from USD$14,258 in 2001 to USD$89,333 in 2014. However, as the casino industry has overshadowed all other sectors of the local economy, it has not only made Macao’s economy highly vulnerable and difficult to sustain, but has also aroused increasing social discontent. The authors lay out a comprehensive and well-argued discussion of the dilemma of the economic monoculture, and strategies by which to overcome it, in the process producing a book that will be of profound interest to scholars of greater China, students of political economy, and travelers to Macao.

The small city of Macao--formerly a Portuguese colony, now a Special Administrative Region of China--liberalized its gaming industry in 2002. Since then a score of new casinos have been built and millions of gamblers have flooded in from mainland China. Per capita income has more than doubled in five years and the gaming operators have outstripped their Las Vegas counterparts in revenue and profits. But rapid economic growth has also brought social and political problems. In this structured survey of modern Macao, 15 experts examine the effects of massive foreign investment, the problems of governance, and increasing public policy challenges in a time of rapid change and potential social instability. Newman M. K. Lamis professor of public administration at the University of Macau.Ian Scottis emeritus professor and fellow of the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University and adjunct professor of public and social administration at the City University of Hong Kong.

This timely book explores economic, political, social, and cultural impacts of the COVID-19. It aims to reveal a future world shaped by the worldwide pandemic. The main content of this book is divided into 5 parts: the pandemic—a short sketch of the pandemic through 2020, the acceleration of the global power transition: from East to West, comparison between authoritarian and democratic in the pandemic era, global international organizations under the COVID-19 influence, and regional international organizations under the COVID-19 influence. In addition, this book also analyzes the impacts from two aspects: the changes of the world order and the repercussions for international organizations and globalization. Three questions will be focused: How the pandemic has changed the existing world order? What the new post-pandemic world order will be? How international cooperation has been affected and will be affected? This book is a comprehensive study that investigates the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the political implication on international organizations. It would not only inspire readers to think about impacts of the outbreak of COVID-19 from economic and political perspectives, but also encourage readers to have a deeper understanding of the global political pattern and potential changes of world order after the pandemic. Therefore, the intended readership not only includes the academics but also includes pro-academics. The academic audiences include university and college scholars (especially those majoring in history, political sciences, economics, and international relations), teachers, and administrative staff at the undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. levels, as well as study centers and research institutes and campus and public libraries. The pro-academic groups include civil servants, especially scholarly bureaucrats and technocrats; white collar and middle-class citizens interested in reading, especially those interested in and concerned about current affairs; and international business elites. The most important feature of this book is that it points out the COVID-19 pandemic has been shaping the world order. It also shows in the coming post-pandemic world, the United States would maintain the position of superpower while the still rising China is likely to share some responsibilities in constructing a new multi-polar world with US and other powers. The prevailing of unilateralism will heavily constrain the role of international organizations.

This book outlines the major social and political changes in the city of Macau during its first 20 years under the "One Country, Two Systems" arrangement with Mainland China. Despite the long-standing image of Macau as Asia’s Las Vegas, it is a city that has changed a great deal since its return to China. Equally, despite this return, it retains a unique social, economic and political character, distinct both from the Mainland of China and from its larger neighbour, Hong Kong. The chapters in this book examine the detail of this uniqueness from a range of perspectives, including the gambling industry, police-society relations, media usage patterns and protest movements. Analysing the state of affairs 20 years after the city’s return to China, they also attempt to anticipate its future trajectory. This is a valuable guide for scholars of Asian, and particularly Chinese, urban politics that will be of interest to academics and students looking to better understand the particularities of Macau.

Examines the political dynamics of constitutional review in hybrid regimes in the context of China's Special Administrative Regions.

This book is the first linguistic study that combines CL and CDA to compare the media representations of Macau’s gaming industry in English-language newspapers published in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. An analytical framework based on the notion of the extended units of meaning of a lexical item (Sinclair, 2004) is adopted to examine the ideological stances regarding Macau’s gaming industry among three English-language newspapers published in the three Chinese territories mentioned above by comparing the patterns of co-selection of shared and unique words and phraseologies. The book’s findings confirm that the news media in these three territories differ in their ideological stances. Moreover, the book offers readers a fresh perspective on Macau by exploring how the region and its gaming industry are represented in three news article corpora. Thus, it provides unique insights into the similarities and differences among these three territories. Further, the research suggests that the methods adopted in this book can be replicated to examine and compare the news and political discourses in a variety of contexts. Accordingly, the book represents a valuable resource not only for students majoring in linguistics, media studies, communication, journalism, etc., but also for researchers in the fields of corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, etc.

This book brings together works by specialists from various areas of the social sciences to reflect on the presence of China in Portugal and in Portuguese-speaking territories. From the first Chinese coolies that migrated to the former Portuguese colonies more than 100 years ago, to the current investments along the Belt and Road Initiative, we take the pulse of this historic, social, political and economic presence and flows, that continues to renew and reinvent itself in the face of the challenges of contemporaneity.