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Phantom wealth and democracy in Macau

By Donald Greenlees
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, MACAU
Tuesday, Oct 16, 2007, Page 9

A few kilometers from the casino lights that advertise the new wealth of Macau's gambling-fueled economy stands a grimy row of overcrowded apartments, the Rua Um do Bairro Va Tai.

In the days of Portugal's colonial rule, this street and the surrounding neighborhood in the north of Macau, a short stroll from the border gate with mainland China, became home to some of the city's poorest residents.

Despite years of spectacular economic growth, locals say the area is little changed, left on the margins of the casino boom.

Kuan Keng Nam, whose father runs a small home-repair business here, recently landed a job as a cook in a Portuguese restaurant in the food court of the Venetian, the newest and biggest of the casinos.

But Kuan, 23, found that a casino job was not a ticket out of a place where many of the people he knows are unemployed or underemployed. Each month Kuan earns 7,000 patacas, as the Macanese currency is called, or US$876 -- a respectable income by local standards -- but it does not go very far.

INFLUX OF LABOR

Like many other Macanese, he complains that the influx of labor from China keeps wages low, while the cost of living, especially rents in working-class neighborhoods, spirals upward.

"Mainland people might be earning 3,000 a month at home. They come here and they earn 6,000," Kuan said. "For them it's a high rate; for us it's too low."

This is the reverse side of Macau's phenomenal growth, out of sight of most visitors to the artificial world created by new casinos like the Venetian, where, above the gondolas on the fake canal, the sky is always blue because it is painted on the ceiling.

"The government tells us the casino boom is bringing wealth to Macau," said Jose Pereira Coutinho, a deputy in Macau's Legislative Assembly. "That is not true, because this wealth is only for a few. It is not helping people who are suffering."

In what has traditionally been a placid political environment, signs of public discontent are emerging. Several thousand people protested on Oct. 1, China's national day, for the first time. They marched over a potpourri of grievances ranging from harsh new penalties for illegal parking to corruption in government and the use of illegal labor. It followed a rowdy protest in May on similar issues. Another protest is expected in December to coincide with the anniversary of the handover to China in 1999.

Macau's small democratic movement is also riding the wave of discontent to step up its campaign for direct elections of the chief executive and the Legislative Assembly. Current laws provide for popular election of only 12 of the 29 legislators. The chief executive is appointed by an electoral college of influential citizens, most of whom are seen as conservative allies of Beijing.

There is a common theme to recent anti-government sentiment, legislators and political analysts say: Living standards for the poor and middle class are being eroded, and the government of Chief Executive Edmund Ho (何厚鏵) is out of touch.

An annual report from the European Commission on conditions in Macau said in August that the gambling boom had resulted in "steep and widening inequality of incomes."

With imported workers -- principally from mainland China but also from Southeast Asia -- numbering about 70,000, or a quarter of the workforce, the labor market has become more competitive and wages have not kept up with prices. Property and rents are estimated to have risen by 200 percent to 300 percent.

It is hard to reconcile these problems with the official economic data, which portray Macau as a huge economic success. Last year, the economy grew 16.6 percent, one of the fastest rates in the world. In the second quarter of this year, growth was 31.9 percent. Official unemployment in August was 3.1 percent.

The city's 23 casinos generated revenues of US$6.87 billion last year, surpassing Las Vegas as the largest gaming market in the world. As money from gambling tourists has flooded in, per capita income reached US$28,436 last year, according to the government, which placed Macau on a par with Hong Kong.

OLDER WORKERS

But for older workers, and those who miss out on a casino or civil service job, opportunities and incomes have deteriorated. Many earn less than a quarter of the wages pulled in by a card dealer in a casino.

Lei Kok Eiu, a 62-year-old electrician who retired this year from a pharmaceutical factory, said the reality for many workers is: "Don't get sick. If you get sick, you can't afford it."

Political analysts say the popular frustration over widening income inequality is being further exacerbated by a succession of government bribery scandals.

All of this has emboldened Macau's democrats and swelled their ranks.

In contrast to the boisterous democracy movement in Hong Kong, the people of Macau have tended to be ambivalent about their politics.

The Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration of 1987 and the Basic Law, Macau's mini-constitution, make no mention of universal suffrage as the ultimate goal of political reform, as Hong Kong's Basic Law does.

"The situation in Macau is similar to Hong Kong in the 1970s," said Eilo Yu (余永逸), a political science lecturer at the University of Macau. "The society is developing in Macau and starting to mobilize. It is becoming more and more politically active. In the long run, people will keep on challenging the government."
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