Study | Portuguese exert little political influence but lead in the legal sector

The Portuguese Consulate in Macau

Contrary to the situation prior to Macau’s handover, the Portuguese community now exerts little political influence in the city, yet it still leads in the legal field, a study conducted by University of Macau sociologist Hao Zhidong shows.
The study examines the social, political and ethnic stratification of Macau’s social classes, and provides a comparison between the roles played by the Portuguese, Macanese and Chinese communities before and after 1999. Its findings were published this month.
Hao Zhidong stressed that, contrary to the social structure before the handover, today the Chinese community politically dominates Macau, with the Portuguese and Macanese populations being pushed aside. Exceptions to this are prominent Macanese personalities serving as lawmakers (José Pereira Coutinho and Leonel Alves), and government department heads such as the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau director Manuel Joaquim das Neves and the Macau Government Tourist Office head Helena de Senna Fernandes.
Looking back, Hao Zhidong noted that between 1997 and 2011, the number of Portuguese and Macanese people living in Macau dropped by 56 percent and 60 percent respectively. Likewise, the percentage of Portuguese and Macanese residents serving as government secretaries dropped from 83 to 11 percent. The figures show “a shift in political power from the Portuguese to the Chinese,” he explained.
Such a change has prompted an unbalanced situation: even though, in 1997, 96 percent of Macau residents were Chinese, the government and public servants’ positions were mainly filled by Portuguese and Macanese citizens. “They not only had higher wages but also the power to treat the Chinese as inferior people,” the sociologist argued.
Hao Zhidong spoke of “a discrimination scenario,” between the Portuguese and Macanese communities, and between the Macanese and the Chinese populations in diverse areas, the results of which included pay gaps and police violence.
The law, however, is still dominated by Portuguese and Macanese influences. As Macau’s entire legislation was originally drafted in Portuguese, and “the Chinese translated version is difficult to understand due to the poor quality of the translation,” Portuguese remains a dominant language “and Portuguese and Macanese people remain the key players in the legal field.”
Out of 49 judges serving in Macau, 24 percent are Portuguese and 11 are Macanese. Among the 272 registered lawyers, 76.4 percent are of Portuguese or Macanese descent.
The sociologist recalled that, according to Macau’s law, all legal documents must be provided in both Chinese and Portuguese, even when a process refers mainly to Chinese stakeholders. “Besides protecting the legal job market, the Portuguese and Macanese communities are also protecting their cultural background by effectively prompting more people to study Portuguese and use the Portuguese language, even though there are Chinese speakers involved in the process,” he said.
In spite of the finding that Macau’s democratization inevitable, the sociologist believes that in the long run, the current position of Portuguese and Macanese residents in civil society “meets the government’s interests,” which are mainly against a political change toward democracy. MDT/Lusa