THE YOUTH OF MACAU:A GENERATION IN A PERIOD OF TRANSITION
Paper presented at the International Conference on Asian Modernization and Youth Shanghai, March 26, 1993
MACAU: AN OPEN CITY AND A BRIDGE FOR EXCHANGES
Macau has been an open city of culture and trade ever since its beginning as a port in mid-sixteenth century. It was a breach of the blockade system even when China was in a stage of extreme closeness. Thanks to Macau, the West was able to further its understanding of the Chinese cultures and customs, while some advanced Western new ideas could permeate this huge land through this opening. A large number of Chinese revolutionary pioneers in modern history, such as Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Zheng Guanying, Sun Yat Sen, used to stay in Macau and accepted the new ideology.
Since mainland China implemented the policy of reform and opening to the outside world in late 1970s,Macau's traditional role has been further strengthened.Taking advantage of its international and free-port status,Macau exports the urgently needed capital, technology,information and managerial knowledge to China, thus assisting her modernization drive. As the rapid development takes place in China, especially in the Pearl River Delta region in recent years, Macau will carry forward its function as the window to facilitate the transmission of the mainland scientific and technological achievements as well as new products to the world market by making use of Macau's international network, especially its special relationship withPortugal and Portugal's historical relations with the European Common Market, Africa and South America.
Macau has always been the gangplank for the West to enter China and, at the same time, the bridge for China to reach the outside world. This traditional role as the window and its intermediary function are the strong points of Macau which should be further enhanced in the future.
A CONSIDERABLY YOUNG POPULATION
Macau has an area of only 18 square kilometres.（1）According to the census of 1991, its population is very young, with 51.46% of its 355,000 people being younger than 30 years old (see the following chart).
The Age Distribution of the Population (1991)
┏━━━━┯━━━━┯━━━━┯━━━━┯━━━━┯━━━━┯━━━━┯━━━━┯━━━━┯━━━━┓
┃ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ over │
┃ │ Total │ 0-9 │ 10-19 │ 20-29 │ 30-39 │ 40-49 │ 50-59 │ 60-69 │ │
┃ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ 70 │
┠────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┼────┨
┃ Total │ 100.00 │ 18.37 │ 13.08 │ 20.01 │ 22.47 │ 10.68 │ 5.79 │ 5.42 │ 4.18 │
┃ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
┃ M │ 48.49 │ 9.44 │ 6.46 │ 8.24 │ 11.46 │ 5.94 │ 2.96 │ 2.37 │ 1.62 ┃
┃ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ┃
┃ F │ 51.51 │ 8.93 │ 6.62 │ 11.77 │ 11.01 │ 4.74 │ 2.83 │ 3.05 │ 2.56 ┃
┃ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ ┃
┗━━━━┷━━━━┷━━━━┷━━━━┷━━━━┷━━━━┷━━━━┷━━━━┷━━━━┷━━━━┛
|
The main reason for Macau's young population is the mass migration of mainland people beginning from late 1970's. These immigrants, most of them being young,constitute, on the one hand, the main productive force of its population (42.48% of the population being between 20 and 40 years of age) and, on the other hand, one of the characteristics of Macau's population is that more than half of its population (50.3%) are born in the mainland China. A considerable portion of the young population born in Macau belongs to the first descendants of the immigrants.
ECONOMIC GROWTH & SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
At the back of the phenomenon of the migration trend lies in the rapid economic development. The annual growth rate of Macau's GNP in the 1970's surpassed 16%.The economic growth in the 1980's was a bit slowed down,but still vigorous. According to the latest statistics of "Asiaweek", the GNP per capita of Macau in 1992 is US$ 11,300, just after Japan (US$ 27,326) and Hong Kong (US$ 14,102) in Asia, and much higher than Taiwan (US$ 8,685) and South Korea (US$ 6,498).
Similar to the other newly developed countries and regions of Asia, the economic and social development of Macau is in a state of imbalance. With the sharp expansion of the population during the last 10 years and the lack of a complete social security system and the shortage ofeducational, sports and medical equipment and resources,social problems such as juvenile delinquency has become all the more obvious and complicated, thus arousing the wide attention from both the community and the government.
Social assistance in Macau has always depended on non-governmental institutions. Since the beginning of the 1980's, the government has attached great importance to the harmonious social and economic development. This strategy has further been identified and perfected in recent years. The activities of non-governmental social work institutions have been strongly subsidized and, at the same time, the social relief functions of the Social Work Department have been strengthened, and the Social Security Fund and the Social Housing Department were established one after another, thus gradually forming a complete social security system to respond to the social problems and demands caused by economic development and to narrow the gap between economic prosperity and social progress.
Because half of Macau's population are new immigrants, they know little about the culture and history of Macau, let alone the identification of Macau. Besides, most of the new immigrants come from rural areas where education is left far behind, their cultural and technical quality is divorced from modern society. Therefore,professional training shall be strengthened so as to help the new immigrants acquire new skills to be adapted to the life in the industrialized society, and, at the same time, civileducation needs to be carried out to heighten the consciousness of democracy and the rule of the law among the new immigrants in order to let them be accustomed to the legal system and merge into the legal societh. Probaly the most important of all is to equip them with the deep understanding of Macau and a secse of belonging to Macau and become a real part of Macau society. Only when this half of the population shares the same feeling with the other can the policy of active involvement in the social and economic harmonious development be successfully realized.
YOUTH ASSOCIATIONS&EDUCATION
Generally speaking,both parents of Macau students have jobs.Since middle and primary schools are not enough,some teenagers,especially those mediocre students,quit school at an early age.Consequently,juvenile delinquency,drug addiction,prostitution,running away from home,playing truants and other unhealthy behaviors occur in Macau now and then.Apart from the perfection of legislation and law enforcement,together with prevention and control of juvenile delinquency,guiding youngsters to make full use of spare time by encouraging them to form associations,organizing various sports,culture and entertainment activities are highly regarded as an important way of education by a large number of educational and youth workers.
Free association,especially youth association,is very poular in Macau.In 1992,the youth activities of more than 36 associations are directly funded by the government.The youngsters cherishing the same ideals and following the same path come together to form their own association to carry out healthy activities.Youth associations not only make friendly contacts with the members and further the friendship and understanding among the youngsters through different kinds of cltural,sports and entertainment activities,but also actively involve in social affairs,tapping young people's creative power and leadership,in order to embody them with the feeling of involvement,mission,identification adnd belonging to Macau society to build the future of Macau hand in hand.
The large number of youth associations in Macau reflects their vitality,but the leaders of the associations are not young as desired.The activities of youngsters ought to be organized by youngsters themselves,instead of the older generation.The solicitude shown from the older generation is understandable,however the passive involvement in the "well-arranged"activities can hardly temper the youngsters real talents and familiarize them with the social environment to get prepared for future participation.
The Government is attaching increasing importance to the social roles played by young pelple.In succession with the establishment of the Youth Council at the end of 1998,Youth Affairs Under Secretary was established in1991 and the "Youth" chapter was first written in the Government policies the following year to draw up the overall policies about young people and try to give an important position to youth work. The Education Department became Education & Youth Department in 1993 to endow the youth affairs managed by the Education Department with more importance and independence.
The Youth Council, a consultative agency to the Governor, is composed of the representatives from all main youth associations and well-known individuals assigned by the Governor. So far, the Youth Council has investigated the social and economic situation, association, employment and crimes of Macau's youngsters to make noticeable contribution for working out a general policy about youth.At present, the Governor is planning to re-organize the Youth Council so that it can better mirror the wishes and aspirations of Macau's youth.
The Education & Youth Department is the executive body of youth policies, responsible for studying youth problems, co-ordinating and promoting youth activities and funding youth associations. The Education & Youth Department also opens up many youth centres for youth activities. At the same time, sports activities are carried out to enrich young people's life in the spare time to reduce the occurrence of undesirable activities and crimes committed by youngsters.
TALENTS TRAINING AND THE PREPARATION FOR TRANSITION
A major characteristic of Macau education is that more than 90% of the schools are private, with the coexistence of different educational systems and little governmental intervention. The Government started to subsidize private schools in 1978 through granting allowance to both teachers and students. Educational reform was implemented ten years later. The issue of "Law on Macau's Education System" and "Law on the Higher Education" in 1991 show the founding of Macau's own education system.
There were not many opportunities of higher education for Macau students, especially students of Chinese origin until late 1970's. Even though there were a small number of people who could afford financially to go to university in Europe, America, Taiwan or Hong Kong, few of them returned to Macau where no suitable jobs were provided, while most of them settled down elsewhere.
As China opened its door to the outside world from 1980's, a large number of Macau students began going to universities in China. At the same time, the Government increased considerably the number of scholarships and encouraged local students to continue their studies outside Macau. The number of scholarships has increased from 39 in 1981 to 1,759 in 1992. Presently, 743 Macau students arestudying different subjects abroad, and hundreds of them have returned to serve Macau after completing their studies.
Bilingual legal and public administration personnel is far from enough in Macau and the qualities of middle,primary and pre-school teachers are uneven. The signing of the "Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration" in 1987 makes the training of personnel and localization of public servants all the more urgent. As a result, the Government decided to purchase East Asia University, the only local university,through the Macau Foundation in 1988. Being a private university established in 1981, East Asia University mainly admitted students from Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.Since the tuition fee was high, few local students could afford. After the purchase of the University, the Macau Foundation added Law, Public Administration, Education and Engineering programmes to meet the needs during the transitional period and for future development. At the same time, tuition fees of local students were reduced so that more local students can be admitted. The number of Macau students in East Asia University has jumped from 563 in the academic year of 1987-1988 up to 985 in 1988-1989, and this number reached 2,026 in the academic year 1992-1993.
After years of effort, East Asia University has changed to a public university, renamed University of Macau, which endeavours to serve Macau society without changing its international characteristics. Macau Polytechnic Institute, another school of higher learning, also came intobeing, focusing on more technical and professional programmes badly needed in Macau. Nearly 2,700 full-time local students are studying in these two institutions. In addition, hundreds of qualified talents have come out from the universities to give service to the society.
OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES
China will resume its sovereignty over Macau on December 20, 1999. According to the "Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration" and the "Basic Law of the Macau Special Administrative Region" (to be approved soon), Macau will be administered by its own citizens and enjoys a high degree of autonomy and executive, legislative and independent judicial powers in line with the principle of "one country,two systems".
The key point for the administration of Macau by its own citizens is the sufficient number of qualified and experienced talents. At the moment, figures show that Macau has a certain number of young people with higher education. They may not be so experienced, but have great potentials. It's just a matter of time and practice that they will become a new generation of leaders playing a backbone part in the process of Macau's administration by its own citizens.
In fact, as the Macau Government gradually opens up mid-level posts in public administration, accepts nonPortuguese educational degrees and implements the policy of localization, an increasing number of young people of Chinese origin, who are open-minded with good technical background, have played a more and more important role in the operation of public administration, thus improving the situation that almost all the middle and higher level posts are fully taken up by people from Portugal. Although the progress of localization of public administration is not satisfactory so far, it's expected to be fully materialized by the year of 1999, laying a solid foundation for the steady transfer of Macau to a special administrative region of the P.R.C. with its administration by its own citizens.
The well-trained local technocrats can guarantee the smooth and efficient operation of Macau's administration machine, which is the key for the continuous prosperity and stability of Macau. Yet, the high degree of autonomy can be realized only when the differences and the unique characteristics of Macau be stressed, the peculiar social and cultural values formed by the close exchange between the East and the West over hundreds of years and the peaceful co-existence of Chinese and foreigners and its special life style and legal system be carried on.
It's a fact that more than 90% of Macau's citizens are ethnic Chinese, half or more of them being new immigrants coming to Macau in the last 10 years. Moreover, there arePortuguese, local-born Eurasian, Africans, Europeans and Southeast Asians settling in Macau. This pluralism of the society can never be neglected. On the one hand, certain conflicts and clashes have been caused among peoples of different races, coming from different regions and because of different customs, cultural backgrounds, language environments, political inclinations and economic situation,while pursuing their own interests. On the other hand,peaceful co-existence can be reached through mutual understanding and respect, cherishing similarities and keeping differences. The fundamental issue for continuous prosperity and effective survival lies in the respect for different values, incorporating things of diverse nature,taking into consideration of various interests, protecting and developing the unique traditions in a predominantly Chinese society during the transitional period. The realization of this aim depends on the consensus and efforts from all the social forces, especially from the young generation.
It is fortunate that the pluralism of Macau and the cultural values fusing the East and the West is recognized,and the importance to protect and strengthen Macau's cultural and historical characteristics, the existing political,administrative, legal and economic systems and life style are gradually understood by a growing number of youngsters in their international exchanges. This awareness will accelerate the maturity of the community identity of Macau society.This fresh strength envigorates the traditional establishment and system while exploring the direction and model ofMacau's development and facing the future challenges by its innate courage and creativity. At the historical juncture, it is a vote of confidence in the future of Macau when Macau's young people are able to remain calm in the constantly changing period and stay in Macau, even return from abroad.The confidence of the new generation is the most secure guarantee to carry out the administration of Macau by its own citizens and the high degree of autonomy. It is believable that 1999 is not the final stop of history, but the starting point of a new era.
Note:
(1) According to the statistics, the size of Macau was enlarged from just about 18sq. km. to 23.5 sq. km. at the end of 1994 because of the land reclamation.
(English translation : Wang Qing)
