Insight | Macau should lead Hengqin’s development

Paulo Barbosa

I have always wondered why Hengqin Island was left undeveloped for centuries. The land is obviously uneven and lumpy, which makes it harder to build there. Until the 1980s, Zhuhai was little more than a fishermen’s village, with plenty of space available in the mainland.
It’s also an historical fact that Hengqin Island – or Mountain Island, as the Portuguese prefer to call it – has been involved in what could be deemed a “soft territorial dispute.” By soft, I want to emphasise that nobody was hurt in the process of fighting for the island’s sovereignty; that is, if the deaths caused by the pirates that swarmed the island during the 19th century are not taken into account.
History books recount how the Portuguese administration tried to control three islands that stood very close to the Macau Peninsula: D. João (known as Xiao Hengqin by the Chinese), Montanha (Da Hengqin) and Lapa (Wanzai). Those islands were all scarcely inhabited. The Portuguese established some military and religious outposts there. A large number of Catholic missionaries had based themselves in Wanzai as early as the 17th century, in such a way that led to the place becoming known as “priests island.” Showing that cooperation had usually been the name of the game in Macau since its founding, joint operations between the local administration and Chinese forces were conducted in order to fight the pirates that found refuge in Hengqin and adjacent islands, including Coloane.
In 1938, Portuguese forces occupied the islands, allegedly in an attempt to defend the locals from the Japanese invasion that isolated and constantly threatened Macau, and which left the city in a perilous situation. The Japanese encircled Macau. The almost uninhabited islands were effectively controlled by them in 1941. After the surrender of Japan, the Chinese occupied the islands. In 1947 during the Chinese Civil War, the Portuguese governor, Albano Rodrigues de Oliveira, signed bilateral agreements with the Nationalists – perhaps one of the few that was endorsed by the Communists. With those agreements in hand, Macau abandoned claims to control the three islands – these incidentally became two islands later on, after D. João and Montanha islands were joined together by land reclamation projects.
This historical introduction shows that the territorial limits of Macau have neither been been consensual nor consistent over the centuries. Scholar António Vasconcelos de Saldanha studied the issue in detail and concluded that the ongoing Hengqin project is, “in a way, the reconsideration of Macau’s [territorial] limits.”
The central government apparently decided that Macau should have a major role in determining what use is given to Hengqin Island. “The solution found allows an extension of Hengqin Island usage [to Macau], but nevertheless the territory is excluded from the MSAR limits,” Mr Saldanha wrote.
By allowing Macau to voice its thoughts on Hengqin’s development, Beijing seems to be acknowledging that the island is more critical to the region’s development than it is to Zhuhai. If, by chance, the island would be considered part of Macau, this region would have potential comparable to Hong Kong or Singapore.
Some of the members of the local ruling class also share this idea.  It is reported that the region’s first chief executive, Edmund Ho, tried to implement a plan that included buying Hengqin.
That did not happen, and the solution found for Hengqin’s development appears to be worse for Macau, since the region’s role in the Hengqin New Area Administrative Committee seems to be a minor one. It is not enough to have Edmund Ho as a member of the advisory committee for Hengqin’s development. On the New Area official webpage, the first thing we see in capital letters is “Hengqin Area of Zhuhai.” Other official documents mention the “Hengqin New Area of Zhuhai Special Economic Zone.”
The committee’s director, Niu Jing, predicts that more than one-third of the population on the nearby island will be made up of Macau residents by 2020. Hengqin’s growth is being largely financed by Macau. However, I ask again: except for the UM campus (under local jurisdiction), does Macau have the weight to decide on the development of an island where thousands of its residents are expected to live?
It doesn’t seem so. This was an historical mistake permitted by Beijing. Macau should lead the island’s development, thus realizing the MSAR’s geographical expansion and diversifying its economy. Not the other way around.