Betting On Beijing

The final moments of the last and oldest Western colony in Asia will seem, to any casual observer, utterly dignified. Just before midnight on Dec. 19, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio and 2,500 guests will gather in a translucent steel-and-glass banquet hall in Macau to toast the end of nearly 450 years of Portuguese occupation. When the clock in Macau's cathedral strikes midnight, Portugal will lower its flag on its faded empire--and the red flag of the People's Republic of China will be raised in its place. Champagne will flow, fireworks will explode and Jiang will know that he and his government are one step closer to their ultimate goal: the reunification of China.

Nice pomp and pageantry, but the fact is that the real transition to Chinese rule already took place two weeks ago--and it was hardly so civil. On Nov. 23 the most powerful gangster in Macau's warring underworld, Wan Kuok-koi (a.k.a. Broken Tooth), sauntered into Courtroom No. 1 of Macau's old courthouse to face the verdict in his criminal trial. Dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, the 44-year-old leader of the 14K--a secret society, or triad, that feeds on Macau's gambling industry--looked confident as he smiled, winked and chatted with friends in the packed gallery. He had been there before, and he seemed sure that his power--which had scared off several key witnesses--would work its magic again. Ferdinand Estrela, the Portuguese judge flown in just for this trial, took a deep breath as he read each of the charges--triad leadership, money-laundering, loan-sharking, phone-tapping--and intoned: "Guilty." Sentence: 15 years, the maximum.

After a moment of stunned silence, the courtroom erupted. The gangster's allies in the audience, including at least one of his four wives, cried out in anger. As Estrela rushed out of the room under armed guard, Wan and his cronies, now handcuffed, hurled curses at the judge. Wan leaped onto a bench and turned to the gallery. "The judge was bribed!" he shouted. He looked down at the row of prison guards, all in flak jackets, ready to haul him away. He pulled closer to one of the guards, held two fingers to his skull and said: "I will kill you." Later, sitting in the new maximum-security prison built specifically for him and his cronies, Wan must have puzzled over the sudden turn of bad luck for the brotherhood of Macau's underworld. That same day, just across the border in Zhuhai, Chinese authorities convicted--and executed--another triad leader and four accomplices for crimes committed in Macau.

Say hello to Macau's new boss, and good-bye, for now, to the old ones. Whether the timing is coincidental or not, many of Macau's 430,000 residents see the demise of the triad leaders as a signal: Beijing means business. And after two years of bloody gang warfare and economic decline, few are complaining. Macau, like Hong Kong, will have 50 years of guaranteed self-rule under a "one country, two systems" arrangement with China. But unlike the former British colony, which chafes at every sign of Beijing's encroachment, Macau seems almost relieved by the coming transition--even the arrival of 1,000 troops from the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Macau people, more than half of whom were born in the mainland, have never been much attached to strong democratic institutions; they don't mind the idea that Beijing might come in and crack the whip. "You can expect a very peaceful and sleepy Macau again," billionaire gambling proprietor Stanley Ho told NEWSWEEK airily. "People don't have to be afraid anymore. It's all over."

Everybody seems to be betting that the gangsters will keep a lower profile in the face of Beijing's harsh approach to justice. Local businessmen hope tourists will return to the casinos and resuscitate the economy. (Triad violence, coupled with the Asian economic crisis, sent the enclave's GDP tumbling 6.8 percent last year.) The Portuguese, who have seemed helpless in the face of rampant corruption and gangland turf wars, want to leave the colony with a modicum of dignity. The communist leaders in Beijing are eager to make Macau a success. For them, the handover points to the future: Macau, like Hong Kong, is meant to be a beacon for Taiwan, the last piece in the unification puzzle. As Macanese lawyer Antonio de Almeida Ferreira says: "If Macau fails, you can say goodbye to Taiwan."

It will not fail because of any resistance to the handover. The indolent Portuguese colony has always had more cordial ties to the mainland than Hong Kong. Unlike the British colony, which was wrested from China during the 19th-century Opium Wars, Macau was established three centuries earlier with the mainland's cooperation. (The Chinese who settled in Macau were mostly farmers looking for a better living, while Hong Kong tended to draw Chinese looking for intellectual freedom or hard-charging business.) The British imported the rule of law and democratic institutions, while the Portuguese left a rich lifestyle--good food, splendid architecture, friendly personal relations--but few strong institutions to defend. In the 1970s, in fact, Portugal begged China to take back its last remnant of empire. But Beijing wanted to wait. Now that the moment has arrived, many Macau shopkeepers are greeting it with large red messages that read: welcome the return to the motherland!