Born here, but not one of us: Macau’s non-Chinese locals

Yuki Lei

Macau’s official statistics do not directly publish a single figure for residents born in Macau who hold non-Chinese nationalities. But the data we have sketch a clear, if uncomfortable, picture – and pose an uncomfortable question for a city facing a demographic crisis.

According to the 2021 census, Macau’s population stood at about 682,070. Roughly 40.9% – some 279,000 people – were born in Macau. Chinese nationals make up about 90% to 92.3% of the population. The non-Chinese share, around 8% to 10%, is overwhelmingly composed of foreign workers and migrants – Filipinos, Vietnamese and others.

The homegrown non-Chinese population is smaller still. The 2021 census recorded 8,991 Portuguese nationals and 13,021 people of Portuguese descent, including the Macanese. Many have lived in Macau for generations. Yet under the interpretation of China’s Nationality Law applied in Macau, residents born here who are of Chinese descent are considered Chinese citizens regardless of whether they hold a Portuguese passport. Only children born in Macau to two foreign parents are, at birth, clearly non-Chinese.

Here is where law and lived reality diverge. Non-Chinese residents of Macau without permanent residency or citizenship cannot access Macau’s welfare system on the same terms as permanent residents. Those born and raised here – for whom Macau is home – face a future in which they may be sent back to a “hometown” they have never known. If permitted to stay, they may remain only as foreign workers, accepting the high cost of living on a migrant worker’s terms, with none of the protections or stability that citizenship confers.

And as the number of workers from mainland China rises, this homegrown non-Chinese community is increasingly blamed, misidentified and resented for pressures they did not create.

Hong Kong has long recognized that a city’s future depends on who it counts as its own. Non-Chinese ethnic minorities born and raised there – many of South Asian descent – have gained greater access to education, language support and civil service employment, even without full citizenship. Hong Kong’s approach is far from perfect, but it at least acknowledges that people born in the city belong to it, and that excluding them is unjust and self-defeating.

Singapore goes further. Its population policy is built on the premise that a low birth rate cannot be solved by borders alone. Singapore grants permanent residency and, eventually, citizenship to foreign-born residents who put down roots, integrating them through housing, education and national service. The result is a society that treats immigration not as a temporary labor arrangement but as a long-term demographic strategy.

Macau’s fertility rate is among the lowest in the world – well below replacement level, and falling. Its population is aging rapidly. Its economy depends on labor it cannot supply from within. And yet its treatment of the small number of non-Chinese people born on its soil remains one of legal limbo and social suspicion.

This is not only a question of fairness. It is a question of arithmetic. A city that cannot reproduce its own population, and refuses to recognize those already born within it, is making a choice – and not a wise one. Macau’s homegrown non-Chinese residents are not outsiders. They are, in every sense that matters, locals. The law simply has not caught up. If Hong Kong and Singapore can find ways to recognize and integrate those born in their cities, so can Macau – and with a birth rate this low, it may soon have no other choice.