Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the perceptions of Macau residents to the city's handover to the PRC, and later to the liberalization of gambling, inscribed in a slogan promoted by the central authorities that builds on the place of Macau and Chineseness in contemporary China.

Paper long abstract:

In 1999, Macau's handover to the People's Republic of China (PRC) put an end to nearly a century and a half of Portuguese colonial rule over the city. As a Special Administrative Region of the PRC, Macau has been granted fifty years of autonomous government, which has inscribed its political future in and out the central Chinese government's jurisdiction. Furthermore, it has allowed for the continuity of Macau's main economic activity, through the liberalization of its gambling industry in 2002. As such, these are political and economic moments phrased in the slogan promoted by the central authorities, "Macau governado pelas suas gentes". While the political handover entails the city's integration into the sovereign sphere of the PRC, administrative autonomy allows the construction of Macau within and beyond the Mainland. This paper aims to analyze the Macau residents' perceptions and identification to place, given both the context of uncertainty and instability that has marked the city's transition to China and the period of economic growth that follows the liberalization. On the one hand, it shows how distinct perceptions of social and political phenomena embody temporalities that reflect the confluence and articulation of global histories in which Macau has emerged and survived. On the other hand, it examines how economic openness and political control have combined in a formula that reframes the place of Macau and the experience of Chineseness on a national scale, inviting further scrutiny towards labeling "neoliberal" the policies that emerge from Chinese politics today.