The Stranger | Where is the economy?

Sheyla Zandonai

The 2020 edition of Art Macao, an arts event spanning six months and featuring exhibitions, performances and workshops by local and international artists, has been cancelled. It is yet another bold move from the administration to attempt to contain the spread of novel coronavirus, now named Covid-19, although little is more astonishing than the unprecedented closure of the city’s 41 casinos ordered by Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng last week. Following suit, more than a dozen local hotels and inns have also shut for business. According to sector representatives, some 80 per cent of restaurants in Macau have, likewise, closed their doors. Other small business operations are striving to survive. Millions of people are trapped under lockdown in mainland China. Travel ban measures have been adopted to stop visitors from coming. Foot traffic at the city’s borders has been reduced to the slightest amount. As a tourism-focused place, Macau has taken a tremendous blow.
Amidst the public health crisis stemming from the epidemic which forced China to ‘amputate’ Hubei Province – where Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus, is located – in order to ‘save’ the rest of the country, Art Macao is the least of anyone’s concerns, one should say. It matters though, not for its nature, but for what its cancelling represents: no clear skies ahead for months to come vis-à-vis the normal operation of the city’s economy.
Uncertainties, many and of many sorts, lie ahead. The public sector has somewhat found ways to continue minimal operations. Schools and higher education institutions are setting up their teaching programmes online, so that students begin tackling content before they can effectively return to class. However, the city’s economic life is in a cloudy mess.
Revenue losses estimated by casino operators and costs necessary for keeping staff on their payroll while not working or working at a lower rate, with few clients likely to come in the near future, are monumental. And yet, properties in Cotai strip remain all lit up, throwing dazzling lights at the occasional driver passing by. It is a phantasmagoric scene of desolation, those empty masses and their sparkling façades, perhaps signalling hope for business to revive sooner than later.
Where else is Macau’s economy sitting? Nearly nowhere to be seen. Apart, for instance, from disinfecting companies, delivery businesses, or knowledge services, with a rushed change to online learning in local schools and universities, little is worth mention, bar the evidence of Macau’s dependency on everything tourism. Nothing new there, but for the first time, we feel the effects of a deep crisis affecting the sector.
Due to force majeure, the city has been temporarily stripped from its black gold, which fuels a powerful and yet vulnerable economic engine. As it is reduced to a gambling-less enclave, people are searching for answers and means to stay above water for the months to come. The scope of businesses being affected spans Macau and abroad in a chain effect: first casinos and hotels, then restaurants, entertainment joints, cleaning companies, food suppliers, logistics firms, transport companies, engineers, and frontline workers on the gaming floor.
This is no minor distress. Companies will default. People will lose jobs. Bosses, dividends. The words of previous CE Chui Sai On about adopting austerity measures when gambling revenues dropped a few months in a row during the height of the Chinese anti-graft campaign in 2014-15 sound pale under the current course of events. The epidemic and its impact are bringing unprecedented changes to Macau and its people’s lifestyle. It will require leadership, tenacity, and a lot of new ideas to get past this mess. But not all change is for the worse. Sometimes, it brings out the best in people.