Opinion | Why Macau has been spared from the political turmoil now gripping Hong Kong
- Macau residents have fully embraced ‘one country, two systems’ and its economy is doing better than Hong Kong’s
Three reasons come to mind. The first is that there is an ideological fault line in Hong Kong with pro- and anti-China forces so implacably opposed to each other that a head-on collision seems inevitable – and the inevitable has just happened.
What boggles the mind is that today, more than two decades after Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty under the “one country, two systems” formula that allows it to continue its way of life for 50 years, many in the territory still cannot come to terms with the fact that ultimately, it is Beijing that calls the shots.
This mindset is especially pronounced among members of the better educated, largely Westernised upper and middle classes. Many of them cannot countenance having to live under communist rule by 2047.
In some extreme cases, this sense of foreboding has morphed into an outright rejection of the reality that Hong Kong was, is and always will be part of China. Hence the emergence of voices calling for independence.
