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.

THE CHINESE OF MACAU A DECADE AFTER THE HANDOVER is an important contribution to the study of identity, a fundamental topic in the twenty-first as in the latter part of the twentieth century. Identity in Macau is studied not only from a local Chinese perspective but also from a Macanese viewpoint. Society, culture and religion among the Chinese of Macau - and in particular the roles played by various Macau social, cultural and religious associations - are each studied in the context of economic circumstances. Based on two years of laborious fieldwork, initially assisted by Macau University students and others, The Chinese of Macau benefits from and re-actualizes Jean Berlie's previous research, published by Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, as Macau 2000. Coinciding with Macau's change in status to become a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, and providing a snapshot of Macau Society at this significant point in Macau's history, Macau 2000, was received with great interest. The joint study of society and economy is a key point of both these complementary studies. Indeed, in Berlie's view, the current world economic crisis will be solved only when economists understand the interplay between these factors. Geoffrey C. Gunn, Professor of International Relations at Nagasaki University, has contributed a foreword and Tong Io Cheng, Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Macau and Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Macau, has contributed a chapter.

Macau, on the threshold of the twentieth-first century, is perhaps a harbinger of a new urban culture. Having been nurtured by the sharply constrasting legacies of China and Portugal, this unique city manages to meld cultural differences and avoid the destructiveness of ethnic clashes. It is thus likened here to the Roman deity Janus, who is usually depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions. By concentrating on the ambivalent history of Macau, the author reveals the historical reality of cultural vacillation between two political entities and the emergence of a creole minority - the Macanese. With a judicious use of English, Chinese, and Portuguese sources, she has provided a pathbreaking, multi-focal perspective of the last Portuguese outpost in Asia. In light of the 'decolonization' of Macau in December 1999, the author's analysis challenges the easy assumptions of the causal sequence: colonialism/postcolonialism, and opens up an interdisciplinary purview of a local instance in cross-cultural studies.

When the British occupied the tiny island of Hong Kong during the First Opium War, the Chinese empire was well into its decline, while Great Britain was already in the second decade of its legendary "Imperial Century." From this collision of empires arose a city that continues to intrigue observers. Melding Chinese and Western influences, Hong Kong has long defied easy categorization. John M. Carroll's engrossing and accessible narrative explores the remarkable history of Hong Kong from the early 1800s through the post-1997 handover, when this former colony became a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. The book explores Hong Kong as a place with a unique identity, yet also a crossroads where Chinese history, British colonial history, and world history intersect. Carroll concludes by exploring the legacies of colonial rule, the consequences of Hong Kong's reintegration with China, and significant developments and challenges since 1997.

Developmentalist Cities addresses the missing urban story in research on East Asian developmentalism and the missing developmentalist story in studies of East Asian urbanization. It does so by promoting inter-disciplinary research into the subject of urban developmentalism: a term that editors Jamie Doucette and Bae-Gyoon Park use to highlight the particular nature of the urban as a site of and for developmentalist intervention. The contributors to this volume deepen this concept by examining the legacy of how Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitical economy, spaces of exception (from special zones to industrial districts), and diverse forms of expertise have helped produce urban space in East Asia. Contributors: Carolyn Cartier, Christina Kim Chilcote, Young Jin Choi, Jamie Doucette, Eli Friedman, Jim Glassman, Heidi Gottfried, Laam Hae, Jinn-yuh Hsu, Iam Chong Ip, Jin-Bum Jang, Soo-Hyun Kim, Jana M. Kleibert, Kah Wee Lee, Seung-Ook Lee, Christina Moon, Bae-Gyoon Park, Hyun Bang Shin.

An epic history of the rise of China and the fall of Hong Kong to authoritarian rule. Essential reading for anyone wishing to deal with China or to understand the world in which we live. The rise of China and the fall of Hong Kong to authoritarian rule are told with unique insight in this new history by Michael Sheridan, drawing on documents from archives in China and the West, interviews with key figures and eyewitness reporting over three decades. The story takes the reader from the earliest days of trade through the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century to the age of globalisation, the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, the fight for democracy on the city's streets and the ultimate victory of the Chinese Communist Party. As the West seeks a new China policy, we learn from private papers how Margaret Thatcher anguished over the fate of Hong Kong, sought secret American briefings on how to deal with Beijing and put her trust in a spymaster who was tormented by his own doubts. The Chinese version of history, so often unheard, emerges from memoirs and documents, many of them entirely new to the foreign reader, which reveal China's negotiating tactics. The voices of Hong Kong people eloquent, smart and bold speak compellingly here at every turn. The Gate to China tells how Hong Kong was the gate to China as it reformed its economy and changed the world, emerging to challenge the West with a new order that raised fundamental questions about freedom, identity, and progress. Told through real human stories and a gripping narrative for the general reader, it is also critical reading for all who study, trade or deal with China.