Animal Farm | Local challenges!

Albano Martins

Whilst completely absorbed by the closure of the Canidrome, although much has happened in the last eight months, most of that time I experienced the same old problems which in many cases smelled of xenophobia.

Macau is China and an integral part of the Greater Bay Area that draws it in, even while Macau puts on all the brakes.

It was China that gave Macau the kind of relief we see today, and with it many problems, of course, because there is no growth without problems. Macau, however, insists on strangulating itself with them! Unfortunately, these problems are the fault of those who could have decisively acted but instead did nothing, and so they fall to us, without consideration or pity.

At the end of the Portuguese Administration there was no money even to entice a cock to crow. Yet today, many roosters and chickens formulate speeches of very dubious quality and half-breed patriotism, which when squeezed produce nothing.

China propelled Macau into a period of economic expansion, which with some exceptions, further filled the pockets of many people, although many modest workers have seen their situation little altered.

For this contribution we can count and count on the non-resident workers, mostly Chinese national citizens, who, contrary to what is stated, do not have the same rights as local citizens.

Macau wants the benefits of the Greater Bay Area but as for the “costs” of integration, it seems to be whistling on the side. When they need to confront these challenges, they cling to the fears they have created, because next to them is Greater China, now a great power that has grown on its own merits!

Our citizens can drive in China but Chinese nationals must stay across the border for numerous “smart” reasons not worth remembering.

This is China, for better or for worse. They want only the best for themselves, with the bad to remain on the other side. Some even think that a worker should eat in the bathroom, depending on his “class”. Others demand that all possible jobs, should be exclusively for them, so that they, the local residents, should have access to them in case of distress – as if unemployment at 1.7 percent has ever been a problem! Anyone who wants to work here has unlimited work opportunities! In the last years of the Portuguese Administration the unemployment rate was around seven percent!

This rhetoric against the mutual recognition of driving licenses, and barriers created against the entry of professionals from abroad are a mere exercise in abdication of competitiveness, as is well noted by the CCAC – they are scatter-gun exercises. With this attitude, one of these days, they will kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Without that goose Macau has almost nothing to give.

Macau people must prepare for competition. The world of the future will not be easy for anyone. It is a world of rapid and challenging changes!

Of course, we expect a change that is based on a set of values, on more equality and greater brotherhood – values which much of the West appears to conspire against: the political class clings to the pot and forgets its people. Freedom itself is often taken to the extreme of the unacceptable in the West.

Anyway, China is going to be a challenge, but primarily a challenge to the Chinese themselves – an internal challenge, it must be. A new cold war, however, seems to be dawning on the horizon; hopefully it will not happen. Extremism spreads.

It is no longer enough for mankind to exploit the forests and animals. Now all that is left is to do away with the foolish species that destroyed it all: mankind itself!