After prosperity for half a century, Macao reached a historical turning point and began to decline, which, just like its rocketing to fortune, was largely induced by the trade with Japan. Beginning in the late 1620s, the Portuguese could no longer make such huge profits in the trade as before. There were basically four reasons for this.

First, in the early 17th century, following the easing up of relations between China and Japan, many more Chinese merchant ships sailed to Japan annually, so Portuguese could no longer monopolize the trade between China and Japan. The Portuguese could neither buy a large quantity of raw silk and silk fabrics from Canton, nor could raise the price at will in the Japanese market.

Second, at the end of the 16th century, after the Japanese government allowed Japanese merchant ships with shogunal licences to trade overseas, Japanese merchants became more and more active. Carrying silver and other specialties produced in Japan, Japanese merchants sailed to various countries in Southeast Asia to exchange them for goods Japanese people were fond of. Like the Chinese merchants, the Japanese began to offer the Portuguese severe competition.

Third, the trade between the Netherlands and Japan developed rapidly, with about twelve Dutch merchant ships arriving at Hirado a year. In particular, the Dutch had good supply of raw silk, which they either bought at various ports in the Southeast Asia, or looted from Chinese and Portuguese merchant ships. The Portuguese monopoly in the trade of raw silk was further undermined.

Fourth, in addition to commercial competition, Portuguese shipping suffered at the hands of both Dutch and Chinese pirates. For instance, in 1631 and 1633, the interception by the Dutch in the area around Singapore caused the Portuguese to lose ten ships and 1.5 million xerafines worth of goods. In 1634, Chinese pirates captured one Portuguese merchant ship in the Taiwan Strait, and forced other three Portuguese ships to turn back to Macao.

In these adverse circumstances, the Portuguese were unable to pay the respondentia they had borrowed from the Japanese merchants, and had to borrow from other Japanese merchants to pay their previous creditors. Such a vicious circle made their debts a snowball, and at last it turned out to be far beyond their repaying ability. The situation finally aroused the attention of the Japanese authorities. In 1630, they detained a Portuguese captain, and in 1631, a Portuguese merchant ship. They also threatened to detain two Portuguese Captain-Majors who were trading in Nagasaki at that time, and ordered the Portuguese who were going to return to Macao in May to take an ultimatum to the debtors.

Therefore, after a long discussion, the Portuguese Governor of Macao and the Senate finally decided that in order not to further annoy the Japanese, it was necessary to send all the debtors under escort to Japan to pay their debts; if they could not clear their debts, they at least should discuss the matter with their creditors, so that an appropriate way of dealing with the aftermath of the debts might be arranged. Hence, in 1632, a Portuguese merchant ship set out to Japan, carrying a large number of "special goods", debtors and bankrupts. After pleading with the Japanese creditors, most of them signed agreements to reduce a certain percentage of their debt, and promised to pay the debt in 1633.

In 1633, although the Portuguese sold out their goods shipped to Japan at very high prices, they still could not pay their debt and had to borrow again from other Japanese merchants. The Japanese discovered the secret soon, and all the Japanese creditors assembled together and unanimously demanded that the Portuguese to liquidate all the debt by a designated date. The Japanese government also issued a notice that Japanese should not lend any more money to the Portuguese in any form. By the designated date, only a few Portuguese had cleared their debt, and most of them had to declare bankruptcy. Some debt reached as high as 300,000 to 400,000 taels of silver.

The bankrupt merchants were brought back to Macao by the Captain-Major of the Japan Voyage, and according to the strict instruction of the Portuguese authorities in Macao, all their personal property and real estate were sold by auction. The second year, they went to Japan again with all the money thus gained, somewhat pacifying the angry Japanese creditors. Afterwards, the Portuguese continued to borrow from the Japanese merchants. By February of 1635, the Portuguese authorities in Macao admitted that the Macaonese owed over 600,000 cruzados to their Japanese creditors.

Nevertheless, as long as the disasters were not too frequent, the trade with Japan was still a profitable business for the Portuguese. In 1639, in a letter to the Pope, the Macao Senate pointed out that the Japan trade still made a contribution worth over three million cruzados annually to the city of Macao. So the Portuguese were still very much afraid that they should lose this trade. And such a danger did exist by the end of the 1620s. At that time, with the intensifying of various domestic conflicts, the Japanese government's conflict with Western missionaries, especially with the Spanish missionaries, also sharpened. As the Portuguese and Spaniards were subjects of the same king, so the Japanese government's relation with the Portuguese deteriorated too.

In 1628, the Japanese government once again strictly prohibited the Portuguese from bringing any missionaries to Japan. Afterwards, the Japanese government severely punished an agent sent by the Portuguese authorities in Macao to Nagasaki to help missionaries penetrate into Japan. The Japanese government also burnt a Portuguese merchant to death, for demanding the payment of a debt on behalf of a Japanese missionary who had absconded to Macao. In 1628, the Spaniards burnt up a Japanese ship with shogunal licence in Siam, and killed and captured many Japanese. So the Japanese wanted to avenge the loss on the Portuguese in Japan. The Portuguese who had been bottled up in Nagasaki did not regain their freedom until the Manila authorities released the Japanese captives and took other measures to make peace with Japan, at the request of the Senate of Macao. In 1635, the Japanese hatred towards the Portuguese had developed to such a state that they even prepared to attack Macao together with the Dutch. In 1636, the Japanese government restricted the Portuguese in Nagasaki to a small artificial island, Deshima. After October 1637, when the farmers on Shimabara, who believed in Catholicism, started an armed uprising opposing feudal exploitation and religious persecution, the Japanese government drove the Japanese wives of the Portuguese and their children of mixed blood away to Macao.

But the Japanese government so far still had not broken off the trade between Japan and Macao. The main reason may have been that the Portuguese were deeply in debt to Japanese merchants. In order to enable the Portuguese to pay the debt, as early as in 1634, in a letter to the Macao Senate, the Japanese government asked the Portuguese to use the profits gained from the trade with Japan to pay debt. Moreover, the Japanese warned the Dutch over and over again that they should not intercept the merchant ships from Macao. Understanding the Japanese intention, the Portuguese authorities in Macao on the surface issued orders prohibiting borrowing from the Japanese over and over again just like the Goa authorities, in reality, they took the lead in borrowing money.

In the meantime, the Japanese merchants had a lot of idle money in hand, because the Japanese government prohibited the merchants with shogunal licences from trading abroad in 1636. Lending money to the Portuguese became the only way for them to take part in foreign trade. The Portuguese merchants were quite shrewd: what they usually borrowed from each creditor did not surpass 4,000 to 5,000 taels of silver, so that the Japanese merchants vied with each other in lending them money, defying the ban by the authorities and the risk involved, which caused the interest rate to drop to 25% - 27%. In 1638, the Macao authorities alone borrowed 97,000 taels of silver from the Japanese merchants. By the end of that year, the total debt the Portuguese in Macao owed to Japanese merchants reached as much as 700,000 cruzados.

Such a tactic of using debt as a means of pinning down the Japanese failed in the end, for the Japanese government strictly implemented the closed door policy. In the autumn of 1638, the following news was brought back to the Senate of Macao by the Portuguese merchants: if missionaries from Manila should dare to slip into Japan again, the Japanese would burn up all the Macaonese ships going to Japan in 1639 and their goods on board. The Japanese also peremptorily declared that they did not think the reason given by the Portuguese that they were unable to control things in Manila held any water. Since the Spanish and Portuguese were subjects of the same king, the Portuguese ought to be held responsible for what the Spaniards did. Upon receiving this ultimatum, the Portuguese authorities in Macao exiled a brother to India at once, for he was feverish enough to want to go to Japan to sacrifice his life for the religious cause, and they also sent someone to Manila immediately, asking the Viceroy and the Bishop there to prohibit the Spanish missionaries from going to Japan.

However, there were still a few Spanish missionaries wanted to go to Japan under any cost. So when some Portuguese arrived at Nagasaki at the end of August, 1639, the Japanese government, which had issued an order banning intercourse with most of the foreign countries a month ago, ordered them to leave Japan at once and never return, despite their entreating piteously with tears in their eyes. Thus, the trade between Macao and Nagasaki, which had lasted for nearly a century, came to an end, and Macao, which had been full of vitality because of this trade voyage, received a heavy blow.

While the trade with Japan got bogged down in difficulties, the trade between Macao and Manila declined a little too. Because the Portuguese raised the prices of their goods in Manila and poked their nose into the trade between the Philippines and Mexico, the Spaniards were unhappy and disputed with them. Such a situation hurt the trade between Macao and Manila. In 1636, the King of Spain banned the trade between Mexico and Peru, which further affected Macao's indirect trade with Latin America through the entrepot trade of Manila. But on the whole, the trade between Macao and Manila was still quite thriving. The silver coin the Portuguese merchants borrowed from the Spaniards was an important source of capital to buy the Chinese goods, and the trade between Macao and Manila was a main pillar supporting Macao's prosperity after the conclusion of the trade between Macao and Japan. Therefore, in 1640, the Portuguese asked the King of Spain to legalize the trade between Macao and Manila and to extend the trade voyage to Acapulco in Mexico.

In December 1640, just when the Portuguese were pinning their hope on the trade between Macao and Manila, a revolution broke out in Portugal proper. The Portuguese people threw off the shackles of Spanish slavery, and supported the Duke of Braganza as the King of Portugal. In January 1641, the new King Joao IV sent Antonio Fialho Ferreira to Macao, who had returned to Portugal from Macao in 1638, to announce that Portugal had regained its independence. Despite his fear that the Spanish envoy would arrive at Macao earlier than he did and make the citizens of Macao continue to be loyal to Spain, Ferreira succeeded in reaching the destination first on May 31, 1642.

At a secret conference convened by the Governor of Macao and the leaders of the church, Ferreira announced the news of Joao IV's accession to all the celebrities in Macao and made a patriotic speech. Most of the participants expressed their loyalty towards the new king, although they knew very well that the recognition of the Joao IV meant the lost of the trade between Macao and Manila, which was Macao's lifeline. At the conference, there was also a certain amount of disagreement, based not so much on reluctance to accept the Duke of Braganza as the King as on a dislike of doing so at the bidding of the unpopular Antonio Fialho Ferreira. The conference finally decided to recognize the new sovereign because of the firm support by Lopo Sarmento de Carvalho, a relative of Ferreira, and Captain-Major of the Japan Voyage several times.

In Macao, the next ten weeks saw enthusiastic celebrations among all the overseas settlements of the Portuguese. Despite torrential rains, all the public buildings, churches and houses of the wealthy citizens were gaily decorated by day and illuminated by night; all the people, including the slaves, wore their best clothes; special thanksgiving services were held in all the churches and convents in rotation, while each parish took it in turn to stage a fancy-dress procession through the principle streets of the city. Bull-fights done in the Portuguese village style were an additional attraction. On June 20, the Governor of Macao and leading civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries all took part in the formal oath-taking ceremony pledging loyalty to Joao IV, in the public square in full view of the populace. With a play presented by children, discharges of musketry by the guard of honour and the firing of a salute by all the cannons of the fortresses, the celebration reached its climax. Afterwards, the Portuguese in Macao sent Ferreira and others to Lisbon, and presented Joao IV with 200 cannons, a large quantity of shells and 200,000 taels of silver to show their loyalty. The Spanish definitely did not want to lose control over this European settlement in China. The Viceroy of the Philippines sent Dom Juan Claudio to Macao when the news of what had happened in Europe reached him. Offering the continuation of the trade between Macao and Manila as a bait, he asked the Portuguese in Macao to continue to be loyal to the King of Spain. Different sources disagree on what followed, but we are sure that the Senate and the Governor of Macao Dom Sebastiao Lobo da Silveira were tit for tat in their arguments, and fierce street fighting took place between the two sides. Even cannon were put into action.

Some materials point out that those who were ready to accept the condition of the Spaniards because of the huge economic benefits involved were the deeply-indebted Governor Sebastiao and some wealthy merchants, while those who were strongly opposed to subjecting Macao to Manila were the Senate and the broad masses of the citizens. When Sebastiao threatened to use the army and cannon, the citizens revolted and openly declared that Sebastiao was a traitor, forcing him to jail the Spanish envoy. Later on, because of long standing national hatred, the Portuguese refused to pay the debt they owed the Spanish and drove all the Spaniards including Spanish missionaries and sisters out of Macao. The result of such actions was predictable: the angry Spaniards cut off their trade with Macao, so that another pillar of the prosperity of Macao collapsed.

At the same time, Macao's trade with the inland of China went from bad to worse. First, for various reasons, the Ming government changed the place for trade between China and Portugal. After 1629, when the Portuguese officer Gonzalves Texeira-Correa had frightened away the Manchu army intruding into Zhuozhou with Western cannon, the Ming government acceded to requests by Xu Guangqi and others, and sent Zhongshu (secretary) Jiang Yunlong and a Jesuit missionary, Jean Rodriguez, to Macao in the spring of 1630. Their tasks were to buy cannon and fusils and to recruit an army of 200 officers and men and 200 servants. It would be a hard core force to launch a counter-attack against the Manchu aristocracy.

The decision to recruit an army in Macao was opposed by many conservative officials both from the central government and at the local level. In particular, Lu Zhaolong, whose native place was Xiangshan, a supervision secretary of the Ministry of Rite, was strongly opposed to "recruiting foreign soldiers and letting them gallop around in China's capital with swords in hands and arrows on bows". Soon afterwards, he presented a memorial to the throne accusing Jiang Yunlong of inciting the Portuguese to gang up in putting pressure on China, refusing to obey Chinese government's order at first, and then raising many unreasonable requests such as "rebuilding of the fortress with curtains", "withdrawing the troops and a vice brigade commander stationed at Xiangshan", "no checking, no prohibiting the foreign ships and spies from going in and out of Macao", "allowing the foreigners in Macao to buy tens of thousands piculs more of rice", "exempting them from the 10,000 taels of silver of land tax", "permitting them to build barracks at Henan Township opposite to Canton" and so on. Lu also accused Jiang of embezzling 30,000 taels out of the 60,000 taels of silver that was to be used as "family allowance" for the mercenary army to be recruited. Upon hearing these accusations, the Chongzhen Emperor ordered the Ward-inspecting Censor to investigate the case, removed Jiang Yunlong from office and made him return to his native place.

Later the investigation made by Ward-inspecting Censor to Guangdong, Gao Qinshun, showed that neither had the Portuguese raised requests to put pressure on China, nor was it possible that Jiang Yunlong embezzled a huge sum of money, for Jiang Yunlong had never been to Macao and had never handled the money personally. But because the officials' opposition to recruiting foreigners was quite strong, the Chongzhen Emperor had to order the army, which in reality only had a few Portuguese, to return to Macao, in spite of the fact that they already reached Nanchang. In addition, as they had taken 40,000 taels of silver from the treasury, there should be 34,000 taels of silver left with a deduction of what they had spent on the way. That was why the Chongzhen Emperor asked them to give back the remaining funds. But the Portuguese refused to do so at first, so the Guangdong authorities detained some barges that were to carry raw silk from Canton to Macao and forced them to pay back the money. Thereafter, the relationship between the Guangdong officials and the Portuguese deteriorated. During that period, the Portuguese evaded taxes for ships and goods by hook or by crook for a long time, defying the Ming government's repeated warnings, and whenever the offenders were caught, they used lame arguments or even claimed that the Chinese officials had no rights to punish them. So in 1631, Guangdong authorities decided to change the place of trade between the two sides. They prohibited the Portuguese from entering Canton, and required the Chinese merchants to carry their goods to Macao and to trade there.

The change not only caused many inconveniences for the Portuguese in purchasing Chinese commodities, but also caused many disputes between the Portuguese and the Chinese merchants coming to Macao. Some of the disputes even led to serious conflicts. One of the conflicts originated from the fact that some cunning Chinese traders and officials "blackmailed 52 cases of silver from the Portuguese". Then the Chinese officials who entered Macao to handle the case were beaten up by the Portuguese, so the Guangdong authorities stopped the food supply to Macao until the foreign assailants surrendered. Therefore, the Portuguese sent a delegation consisting of six gentlemen in 1637, asking the Guangdong authorities to restore the original system. Taking into consideration the recent incident when British ships led by John Weddell penetrated into provincial capital and caused conflicts, the Guangdong authorities pointed out in a memorial to the throne:

In the first half of 1640, an imperial order approving this report to the throne passed to Macao. The Portuguese had to give up the hope of returning to Canton.

What had influenced the trade between China and Portugal most was China's domestic change. The Ming government had become very corrupt not long after its establishment. Ever since the beginning of the 17th century, drought and flooding had occurred successively all over China, and the Ming dynasty was losing strength. After 1641, with the peasant uprising against the Ming government becoming a blazing prairie of fire, and the Qing army trampling down the vast area of north China, more than half of China was devastated by war. Under such circumstances, the production of commodities for export such as raw silk and silk fabrics was greatly affected, and the market for goods from overseas shrank a great deal. It was not easy any more for the Portuguese to buy ideal goods from the inland of China and to market foreign goods in China, and the Portuguese could no longer gain much profit from trading with China.

Besides the breaking of trade relations with Japan and the Philippines and a decline in trade with China, there were two more reasons for Macao's going downhill. First, the Dutch strictly blockaded the Malacca Strait, almost cutting all links between Macao and Goa. In the 1630s, the Dutch warships set up a blockade line at Malacca again, inflicting a heavy loss on the Portuguese. From then on, all the Portuguese regarded passing the Malacca Straits as a great danger. The merchants who had made a lot of money from Japan and China and intended to return to Goa from Macao used to change most of their property into gold, so that when they were attacked on the way, they could bring the gold with them, take small boats and flee into the jungles on the islands nearby to make their escape. Later on, the situation became so bad that the Portuguese often gave up their ships and fled away without any resistance, when they encountered Dutch warships on the way.

In order to change this situation, the Viceroy to the Philippines suggested that the Portuguese should build three to four warships and protect the navigation line between Macao and Goa with Macao as their base. This formula would have cost the Macaonese a great deal of money, so they turned a deaf ear to it. Soon afterwards, the Portuguese Viceroy to India also wrote to the social celebrities in Macao, asking them to arm some ships to protect their own property, or at least to contribute a large sum of money to the Goa authorities for them to establish an escort fleet. This suggestion received no positive response either. Thus, the Portuguese Governor to India had to order those who fled with their gold at the sight of the Dutch to pay some compensation to those who lost their goods. In 1634, the Dutch further tightened their blockade against Malacca and Goa. That was why the Portuguese had to use the English merchant ship "London" and Weddell's fleet to carry cannon, copper and other materials to Goa in 1635 and 1637. The Commander of the Dutch fleet blockading the Malacca Strait knew very well that these English warships were laded with their enemy's war materials, but they did not dare to launch an attack on the English ships and helplessly saw them passing through the blockade line.

In order to break the Dutch blockade and lift the siege of Malacca, in 1637, some Macaonese prepared to equip a fleet of six armed ships with their own money. The flag ship was to have forty seamen and ten to twelve cannon. This move was supported by the Senate. But we have no way to know the result, because we can not find any records of the follow-up action. The Dutch finally captured Malacca in January 1641, after many years' besiege. From then on, it became even more difficult for the Portuguese to pass through Malacca Strait. In 1643, when the Portuguese used an English ship to carry goods again, the Dutch captured the ship, because a civil war had broken out in England and the English had no time to retaliate. Then the Portuguese did not dare to use the English ships. In later years, only during the ten years of truce from 1644 to 1654, did the Portuguese resume the communication between Macao and Goa.

When the direct link between Macao and Goa and between Goa and Portugal proper in Europe were basically cut off, the Portuguese in Macao lost another important trade voyage, as well as their main source of manpower and capital. All they could do then was to act as a commodity trafficker among the Asian countries, like an isolated "piece" in Chinese chess (weiqi). Macao's status as an important trading port in the Far East was further shaken.

Another reason accounting for the decline of Macao was the endless internal struggles among the Portuguese themselves. For a long time, both in religious circles and among secular people, open strife or veiled struggles were always being waged in the early 1620s, the battle between the Jesuits and Dominicans became white-hot. At the end of 1622, Colonel Joao Soares Vivas and others accused the Captain-Major of the Japan Voyage, Lopo Sarmento de Carvalho, neglecting his duty to scramble for battle honours in defeating the Dutch. The Jesuits and the Senate were on Joao Soares Vivas' side, while the Dominicans and the relatives of Sarmento defended Sarmento. Even Goa and Lisbon were involved in the dispute.

In 1623, at the request of the inhabitants in Macao, the Portuguese Viceroy to India appointed a Governor to the city to replace the Captain-Major of the Japan Voyage. The Macaonese, however, regretted the request, because the Portuguese Viceroy to India gave the Governor of Macao too much power. The Macaonese refused to obey Dom Francisco Mascarenhas, the first Captain-General and Governor, whenever he gave any order in the king's name, and forced him to move into the convent of St. Augustine, where they went so far as to fire with three cannon shots at him. The first Captain-General and Governor was not a good man. By exploiting the conflict between the Jesuits and the Dominicans, he secured his foothold before long. At that time, the Jesuits refused to recognize Antonio do Rosario of the Dominic as the Acting Bishop of the Diocese of China, attempting to replace him with Dom Diogo Valente, the Bishop of Japan, a Jesuit seeking asylum in Macao. Henceforth, these monks were hostile to each other, and took up firearms to fight once more. The Jesuits, backed by the Senate, even fired at the convent of the Dominicans. Dom Mascarenhas seized the opportunity and stood at the Dominicans' side, winning their firm support. After one year's trial of strength, the Goa church authorities made a final verdict in the favour of the Dominicans and Mascarenhas.

With this victory, Mascarenhas was swollen with even more arrogance and did whatever he wanted. Defying the opposition of the Jesuits and the Senate, he built a Fortress with a curtain at Patane and the city wall, and caused the Chinese officials to take punitive measures like cutting off food supply. He also broke into inhabitants' houses at will, insulting the fidalgos' wives and daughters, so that the local women did not even dare to go to the church. On October 10, 1624, the Senate and the Jesuits, driven beyond the limits of forbearance, mutinied. Some records say that Mascarenhas was killed by the angry people, while others say that he escaped on a ship to India and disappeared. But in fact, Mascarenhas was still alive. He quickly suppressed his enemies, and sent them to Goa to be tried. Then, he occupied the Jesuits' St. Paul Fortress by conspiracy at around the time when the Chinese troops were pulling down the Fortress of Patane.

According to records of that time, at first, Mascarenhas visited the Jesuits in their college and talked a lot there, and then he asked the hosts to allow him to visit the St. Paul Fortress to get a general view of the city and its situation therefrom. On the day of the visiting, he assembled about fifty of his soldiers, telling some of them to follow him into the fortress as his retinue, whilst the remainder were to stroll in small groups of threes and fours, as if they were diverting themselves. In the evening, when the Jesuit Fathers asked him to leave, Mascarenhas had the Jesuits driven out of the fortress instead. Thereafter, he built barracks, cistern and a riding path leading to the hill, turning the St. Paul Fortress into the residential place for the Portuguese Governor of Macao. It has served that function for one century and a half, and the Macaonese called it the "Citadel".

Most of the governors of Macao after Mascarenhas were jackals from the same lair; few of them ever brought any benevolent rule to Macao. That was why the Senate of Macao called for a restoration of the original system, having the Captain-Major of the Japan Voyage rule Macao again. Only from 1636 to 1638, when Domingos da Camara de Noronha was the Governor of Macao, was the situation in Macao somewhat better. By the beginning of the 1640s, the internal disorder became white-hot again. At that time, one party included the Jesuits and the governor of Macao, Dom Sebastiao Lobo da silveira; another party included the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians and others. After a long and fierce confrontation, the two parties became even more hotheaded. Both took up arms in bloody street fighting.

In June 1642, in order to celebrate the restoration of the Portuguese King, the two sides stopped hostile activities for a while. With the end of the celebration, the strife restarted at once, and Macao was turned into a hell of chaos again. During this period, the Governor Sebastiao Lobo da Silveira committed bloodcurdling crimes. One such crime was his cold-blooded murder of the Crown Administrator, Diogo Vaz Freire, whom he kept chained in a filthy dungeon in the basement of his house for eight months, before beating him to death on the night of May 4, 1643. Not only did the Governor brutally refuse his victim's pitiful plea to be allowed the sacraments and confession before death, but also in his sadistic rage he strangled a slave-boy who ventured to appeal for mercy for the dying wretch. He crowned this double atrocity by depositing the Freire's mangled corpse at a door to horrify the public. This situation ended with Sebastiao's deportation to Portugal for trial and the arrival of a new Governor in 1644.

When Dom Diogo Coutinho Docem assumed the governorship two years later in August 1646, another mutiny against the governor and the Senate was carried out by soldiers protesting against the Portuguese authorities' long-time arrears in payment. The mutinous troops occupied the Fortress of Guia, posted seditious proclamations on the church doors and trained the fortress cannon on the Senate House. The citizens on their part took up arms, and in the ensuing free-for-all fighting they stormed into governmental buildings and cut to pieces the unfortunate Captain-General, whom they found cowering under the staircase. Although the murder of the Governor of Macao was in reality an action opposing the control of the Portuguese Governor to India, the King of Portugal had too many troubles to contend with nearer home to enable him to take drastic action. He therefore contented himself with writing to the Viceroy to India: for the present, we had to dissimulate in order to avoid causing another disturbance, as would happen if a judicial investigation had been made, because we did not know for certain who were the guilty parties to be punished. In such a chaotic situation, the black slaves, who were subjected to every kind of maltreatment, took the opportunity to revolt, and quite a few of them fled and joined the ranks of pirates. Others plotted to occupy a fortress and then to start an armed uprising. But the plan failed, and eight of the leaders were hanged.

Such being the case with Macao at that time, an Englishman commented:

Obviously, the continuous disorder in Macao greatly consumed the local people's limited strength, making Macao withered away even further.

For all these reasons, commercial competition, the loss of markets, the Dutch blockade and internal strife, the decline of Macao was somewhat irreversible. Some Englishmen who arrived in Macao in 1644 complained that Macao was very poor, and that except for porcelain, there was a shortage of everything. Dom Braz de Castro, who was appointed as the Governor of Macao in 1648, refused to take the post, which had been coveted by the Portuguese fidalgos not long ago, because of its poverty and the bellicosity of its inhabitants. Nevertheless, the Portuguese in Macao preferred to suffer economical disaster rather than to be subordinate to the Spanish. Thus, the Portuguese King, Dom Joao IV, declared in 1654: "No city is more loyal than the city of the name of God." By the end of the golden period, the inhabitants in Macao had won a very high reputation for Macao from Portugal after all.

After Macao's decline, the Portuguese made various efforts trying to restore the prosperity of the city. But all these efforts were fruitless at last.

First, the Portuguese tried to restore the crucial trade with Japan. These efforts started as early as 1640. Because the direct reason for Japan's cutting off its trade with Macao was the continuous infiltration by Spanish missionaries, the Macao authorities obtained through negotiation a written pledge from the Spanish Viceroy to the Philippines and the Philippines' church authorities that they would send no more missionaries to Japan under any circumstance. On March 13, 1640, a meeting of the General Council was held in Macao. The Council decided to send envoys to Japan with the Spanish written pledge and other documents, asking for a restoration of the trade between Japan and Macao, so as to pay the debts owed to the Japanese merchants. Luis Paes Pacheco and three others, who were gentlemen with trade experience in Japan and a good reputation among the Macaonese, were chosen to carry out this dangerous mission.

On June 22, the envoys boarded a merchant ship for Japan with 6,000 taels of silver. They arrived at Nagasaki on July 6, and presented the documents to the Japanese government. The Japanese government refused to accept the request of the Portuguese, and in order to "kill the chicken to frighten the monkey", they decided to punish them to warn the others not to bother them again. They cruelly killed the four envoys and fifty-seven members of their entourage, and burnt the Portuguese merchant ship, only allowing seventeen servants to go back to Macao by a Chinese junk to report what had happened. On September 1, the survivors returned to Macao, bearing the message that Japan would punish anyone who dare to enter Japan, even if he should be the King of Portugal, or the christian God himself.

That was a heavy blow to the Portuguese whose living depended on the trade with Japan. However, they immediately accepted the blow with traditional Portuguese piety. The churches sounded a festival bell; the fortresses fired salutes; with tears in their eyes, people sang beautiful songs and congratulated each other for having such a good fortune. In particular, the dependents and relatives of those who were killed in Japan dressed in their colourful holiday best instead of in mourning clothes. They opened their windows and let in more sunshine rather than shut them up as people usually did in a period of mourning. They thought that if the Japanese had only refused to trade, they would have been very sad. But now these envoys had died for the God; they were glorious martyrs. Henceforth, God would see and pity the suffering of the inhabitants in Macao.

At the end of 1641, when the Portuguese Viceroy to India got the news that Portugal had shaken off the yoke of the Spanish, he knew that once the Portuguese in Macao had declared their loyalty to the King of Portugal, the trade between Macao and Manila, now the economic pillar supporting Macao, would break down, and Macao would fall into serious difficulties. Therefore, he wrote to the Portuguese authorities in Macao, instructing them to restore the trade with Japan by using the opportunity of Portugal's regaining independence. The Portuguese in Macao were also determined to have another try. However, they knew very well that this aim could not be realized unless the King of Portugal himself sent an ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary with imperial credentials. Thus, the representatives they sent to Lisbon with many gifts to pledge their loyalty to the King also had a task of requesting him to send an ambassador to Japan. In 1643, these representatives, including Antonio Fialho Ferreira, arrived at Lisbon, and tried their best to advocate the benefits of trading with Japan. They said that as a result of such trade, they could usually provide the national treasury of Portugal with a revenue of 200,000 gold coins a year. Therefore, Joao IV appointed Goncalo de Siqeira de Souza as the first ambassador ever sent to Japan by an European monarch.

After one year's hard voyage, Souza arrived at Macao at the end of May, 1645. The Portuguese in Macao warmly welcomed this ambassador, lodged him in a luxurious house and provided him with a fund of 40,000 gold coins. But to the surprise of the Macaonese, they found out that Joao IV had clearly instructed Souza not to promise that Portugal would never send missionaries to Japan under any circumstances, in spite of strong pleading by Ferreira. They hurriedly held a meeting of the General Council, and decided to write to His Majesty, pointing out that the ambassador had no hope of success unless a pledge forbidding missionaries to go to Japan was clearly made. As the Portuguese in Macao were too anxious to wait for another two years to get new instructions from the king, Souza went to Goa at the end of 1645, asking the Portuguese Viceroy to India to make the verdict. All the political figures in Goa supported the Macaonese view, so Souza had to agree. However, it was impossible for them to revise the critical credentials. In August 1646, the embassy led by Souza set out for Japan for the first time, but they were blown back to Macao by a typhoon. In July 1647, they left for Japan again and reached Nagasaki.

The Japanese government had received the news that a Portuguese embassy would come as early as two years before, and had decided to wipe out the Portuguese embassy. When the local officials from Nagasaki sent the Portuguese credentials to Japan's capital, the Japanese government assembled 50,000 soldiers, 2,000 ships and boats, and 300 cannon to deal with the Portuguese embassy of only four hundred people, fifty-two cannons and two ships. Facing the ring upon ring encirclement, instead of recoiling, Souza stood firm in the harbour of Nagasaki, waiting for the reply which he had craved for in four years of hard voyage. Because in the credentials the Portuguese King had not promised not to send any more missionaries to Japan, and the Dutch trading in Japan slandered the Portuguese in any way they could, the Japanese government decided in late August that they would continue to refuse trade with Portugal. In view of the fact that the Portuguese ambassador had come to report the news of Portugal's regaining of independence and he had behaved very bravely, the Japanese government decided not to kill him in the end. But Portuguese hopes of resuming trade with the Japanese vanished once more.

Three years later, Joao IV got the news of the mission's failure and came to realize that his subjects in Macao were right. He redrafted his credentials pledging that he would never send any missionaries to Japan again and instructed the Viceroy to India to send another envoy to Japan. However, the war with the Dutch and other nations had exhausted the energy of the Portuguese in India at the time, and they had no resources to send an envoy. So the Portuguese efforts to resume trade with Japan failed.

Forty years later, in 1685, taking advantage of a chance, the Portuguese in Macao made a last try to restore trade with Japan. A Japanese ship had an accident along Chinese coast, and twelve Japanese survivors floated to a place near Macao and were rescued by a Japanese woman residing in Macao. The Senate treated the survivors very well. When sending them back to Japan, the Portuguese again pleaded with the Japanese government to resume trade. Unfortunately, because of large foreign trade deficits, Japan were in danger of exhausting some metals produced domestically such as gold, silver and copper, so they had just made a certain restrictions in the total trade volume with the Chinese and Dutch merchants that year. Under such circumstances, it was unlikely that they would reopen their door to Portugal. Although the Portuguese sailing to Japan returned to Macao safely, the news they brought back was ominous: no matter with what kind of excuses, no Portuguese ships were allowed to appear at the Japanese coast! The Portuguese finally had to give up the hope of resuming trade with Japan.

In the last period of the Ming government, the Portuguese also attempted to develop the trade with China again. First, they tried to make a favourable impression on the Ming court and the commonalty through helping the Ming government. In 1643, because Zhang Xianzhong's rebel peasant army was very active on the both banks of the Yangtze River, at the request of the Guangdong officials, the Portuguese authorities provided Canton with a cannon and sent three gunners to Nanjing to help the defence of the two cities. In 1644, when the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide, most Portuguese continued to help the Southern Ming government to resist the Qing army. Only a few missionaries contacted the Manchu aristocrats and Li Zicheng, the leader of the peasant army. In March 1645, Francois Sambiasi, a Jesuit, went to Macao with a request for support from King Fu of the Southern Ming government. The leaders of the Jesuits in Macao considered that in the present situation, Francois Sambiasi's assuming the work as an envoy would do Catholicism, the Jesuits and Macao good instead of harm. Therefore, Francois Sambiasi was accorded a grand reception, when he arrived at Macao. After the collapse of the government of King Fu in Nanjing, Francois Sambiasi expressed loyalty to King Tang of Southern Ming government in Fuzhou. Together with a eunuch Peng Tianshou, who was a Catholic, Francois went to Macao to buy cannons and to ask for the providing of some troops. The Portuguese continued to support the Southern Ming actively and provided a number of cannons and 300 soldiers.

In view of the help provided by the Portuguese, the tottering Southern Ming government gave them a generous reward quickly. For instance, King Fu had approved a request, which was made by Francois Sambiasi, but was turned down by the Ming government in 1639, to have a tract of coastal land of Duimianshan (Lapa), to the west of Macao Peninsula, to be used as a grave site for a Jesuit missionary, Jean Rodriguez, who had served the Ming government as an interpreter for a long time. Before long, the Jesuits occupied more land in Duimianshan perhaps with King Tang's permission. Afterwards, the Dominicans and the Augustinians also occupied the so-called "waste land" in Duimianshan. The Jesuits built a small church, and a few illustrious and influential Portuguese noblemen built some country villas there. A shipyard and a fort defending the Inner Harbour were also built.

The government of King Tang collapsed before it could use the cannon and European soldiers. So Peng Tianshou, the Catholic eunuch, brought the armed force to the King Gui, who established a government in Guiling and named his reign Yongli (1647-1661). The Portuguese helped him resist the Qing army. For instance, in 1647, when the Qing army launched a fierce attack against Guiling, the Ming army and the troops from Macao, directed by Qu Shisi and his subordinate Jiao Lian, took the edge off the Qing army's spirit by firing at and hitting their cavalrymen with Western cannon; then the troops led by Jao Lian dashed out of the city and killed thousands of the Qing troops.

Meanwhile, the Jesuits Andre Xavier Koffer, Michael Boym and others actively spread Catholicism among the officials of the Southern Ming government including King Gui himself, and Catholicism became a spiritual pillar supporting King Gui and his subordinates. Top officials and the royal family members such as King Gui's mother by law, Queen Dowager Wang, King Gui's own mother (his father's concubine) Ma, the Queen Wang and others accepted christening one after another. Even King Gui himself wanted to be christened. He was refused, because he had many concubines and that was not allowed by Catholicism. In 1648, the young prince, a son of King Gui, recovered from a long illness after accepting christening. The Queen Dowager sent Peng Tianshou to Macao asking the Jesuit priests to hold a Mass. The Portuguese regarded the envoy sent by the Queen Dowager as a good opportunity to show their friendship for the Southern Ming government. On October 17, when Peng Tianshou arrived at Macao, the fortresses fired salutes and the priests and brothers welcomed him in a line. On October 31, St. Paul's Church held a grand Mass for the royal family of the Southern Ming. After the Mass, the Portuguese Governor of Macao held a banquet for the envoy and gave the Southern Ming government one hundred firelocks.

Therefore, the relationship between the Portuguese in Macao and the Southern Ming government became even closer, and at the requests of the Jesuit, the government of King Gui exempted the Portuguese in Macao from the annual rent of 500 taels of silver forever, and from ship taxes for several years. It could be imagined that once the Southern Ming government won the victory in the war resisting the Qing army, the Portuguese would certainly be given more privileges in trade. However, the Southern Ming government could hardly be saved by the limited assistance of the Portuguese in Macao. It suffered one major defeat after another in 1649 and 1650, and lost the provinces of Jiangxi, Hunan and Guangdong in succession. It became even more difficult for the Southern Ming government to realize its plan of revitalization. The Portuguese once more failed to achieve its aim.

Under such circumstances, the Portuguese had to face reality and carefully dealt with the rising Qing government. When the Qing army with shining spears and armored horses marched towards Macao, they did not resist. Thus the Qing army drove straight into Macao, and Macao was spared destruction in the flames of war when the government changed. At that time, although the Qing officials did not know that the Portuguese had actively helped the Ming to resist the Qing over and over again, they kept a quite wary eye on them from the very beginning. As early as 1647, when the Qing army captured Canton for the first time, the Qing government stationed a vice brigade commander at Qianshan Stronghold with a troop of 500 men. Meanwhile it prohibited the Portuguese from going to the provincial capital to trade, and only permit the Chinese merchants to carry their goods to Macao according to regulations enacted in 1640.

In 1650, when the Qing army recaptured Canton, the troops stationed at Qianshan Stronghold were increased to 1,000 and divided into left and right battalions with two Qianzongs (company commander) and four Bazongs (vice company commander). Before long, maintaining the taxes and corvee of the Ming, the Qing government levied 20,000 taels of silver from the Portuguese in Macao as taxes on ship and goods. However, in order to win popular support, the Qing government abolished the extra taxes imposed by the Ming government in its last years, so the Portuguese stopped paying 10,000 taels of silver of poll tax, which the Ming government had collected in its last years. At the same time, the Qing government considered that the court owned whole nation and there was no need for the state to fuss about a drop in the ocean, and once exempted the Portuguese from rent, as "a kind of benevolence shown to the people coming from afar by this dynasty". In addition, being burdened with military affairs at that time, the Qing government was too busy to attend to the matter of appointing officials in Macao; it only put Macao under the jurisdiction of the Magistrate of Xiangshan County, who ruled Macao less strictly than in the Ming government.

Seeing the Qing government consolidate its power with each passing day, the Portuguese in Macao gradually changed their attitude of helping the Ming to resist the Qing, so as not to annoy the Qing and be driven out. Henceforth, when Michael Boym, who was sent on a diplomatic mission to Vatican by the Queen Dowager of the Southern Ming government, went to Rome by way of Macao at the end of 1650, the Portuguese Governor of Macao, Joao de Souza Pereira, obstructed his passage. Only with a warning from the prelates that whoever hindered Michael Boym from going to the Vatican was to be expelled from the church, was he able to take ship. Soon afterwards, when Andre Xavier Koffer hurried to Macao asking the Portuguese authorities to send troops to help King Gui because the Southern Ming troops suffered successive defeats, the Portuguese authorities refused his appeal. In 1658, when Boym returned to the Far East from Rome, the Portuguese authorities in Macao sent someone to Siam, informing him that he was not allowed to enter China via Macao, forcing him to go via Vietnam. Soon he died of exhaustion and worry at the border between Vietnam and Guangxi Province of China.

In the meantime, the Portuguese in Macao showed quite an obedient attitude towards the Qing government. When their behaviour was investigated and dealt with by the Qing officials, they did not resist by force. For instance, in 1653, when the Qing government decided to restore the rent, the Portuguese authorities in Macao attempted to refuse at first, but when the Qing officials detained the interpreter of the Senate and the Portuguese failed to get him released in spite of various efforts, they decided to pay the rent obediently. In 1657, when the Viceroy of the Two Guangs sent troops to Macao to arrest some of the most celebrated local gentry because of an accusation lodged by Mangel L. Aranha, an Alderman of Macao, they allowed themselves to be arrested without putting up a fight. When they reached Canton, they produced documents to prove their innocence and 4,000 taels of silver, and thus ended the trouble.

Moreover, the Portuguese also tried every means possible to please the Qing government. For example, in 1655, after rescuing an infant elephant from the sea, they sent it as tribute to the Qing Emperor. In 1659, they sent an able Jesuit, Ferdinand Verbiest, and others to inland to help Jean Adam Schall von Bell to compile almanac and cast cannon. Therefore, the Portuguese were permitted to remain in Macao when the Qing army captured Guangdong.

But their aid and obedience did not succeed in winning from the Qing the special treatment the Southern Ming government had given the Macaonese. In order to wipe out the resisting forces led by Zheng Chenggong in Taiwan, the Qing government ordered the people to evacuate the coastal areas, which made the conditions of the Portuguese in Macao even worse. The Chinese inhabitants on the Macao Peninsula were all forced to evacuate inland, and the Portuguese, as foreigners under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, also received an order in 1662 that they would have to dismantle their fortresses so they could not be used by Zheng Chenggong. Only the mediation of the Jesuits, Jean Adam Schall von Bell, Jacques le Faure and others, who were trusted by the Shumzhi Emperor, and reiterated Portuguese claim that Macao had done meritorious services for China, and had the ability to cope with the "pirates", won a revocation of the order. Hence the Portuguese were allowed to remain in Macao, and so were their fortresses.

In 1664, Jean Adam Schall von Bell was falsely accused by Yang Guangxian, a very conservative and stubborn official, as a person conspiring against China and Schall was sentenced to death by the Qing government. Then the Ministry of Rites and Ministry of Defence suggested driving the Portuguese in Macao back home. The Qing government rejected this idea, but again ordered the Portuguese to move inland. The indigenous Portuguese agreed to do so, while the Portuguese from Europe strongly opposed the idea. Finally, they refused to obey the order. The Guangdong authorities sent a fleet to encircle Macao and prepared to attack. The Portuguese were forced to bribe the top officials in Guangdong with 20,000 gold coins, asking them to plead with the Qing government for mercy on their behalf. Fortunately, just at that time, the young Emperor Kangxi assumed the throne. He wanted the Western missionaries to revise calendar. He also thought that the Portuguese, who had stayed in Macao for hundred years, could not live inland, because of language difficulties, their ignorance of the Chinese ways of farming, and the lack of a proper place for them to settle down. At the beginning of 1668, the Kangxi Emperor issued an order that the Portuguese could continue to stay in Macao.

Nevertheless, ever since the issuing of the evacuation order forcing people to move away from the coastal areas, the Qing government had further strengthened its guard on Macao. In 1662, 500 soldiers, a redundancy from the regiment directly under Guangdong Governor's command, were added into the troops of Qianshan Stronghold, garrisoning the county seat of Xiangshan. In 1664, the Qing government raised the commanding officer at Qianshan Stronghold to Fujiang (brigade commander) and added a Dusi (vice battalion commander) and a Shoubei (assistant battalion commander) to the left and right battalions with a total force of 2,000 men. The Barrier Gate, which had been opened every day in the past, was to open six times per month, and later only twice per month. The amount of grain transported to Macao was to be strictly controlled according to the population in Macao, and other articles for use were also strictly checked, while some were banned. Whenever the Barrier Gate was open, the local civil and military officials would all assemble at the gate to check the goods passing by. When it was closed, a paper strip seal from the Circuit Intendant of Canton, Zhaoqing, Nanxiong and Shaozhou prefectures would be put on the gate. In 1668, when the Brigade Commander was moved to Xiangshan County seat, the Vice Battalion Commander and the Company Commander of the left battalion were stationed in Qianshan Stronghold, and a Vice Company Commander with one shao of troops (about 80 to 100 men) was stationed at the Barrier Gate. Five years later, Shen Lianghan, the Magistrate of Xiangshan County, built an official building at the Barrier Gate to garrison the area, so that Macao was strictly controlled by the Qing army.

At the moment the Qing tightened its control over Macao, what struck the Portuguese most was that the Qing government prohibited them from trading abroad, just like its ban for Chinese inhabitants: "Not a piece of plank is allowed to get into the sea". Once the Portuguese ships sailed into the harbours, they were not allowed to sail out again. From 1662 to 1664, the Portuguese could not do any business. By the summer of 1664, about fifteen Portuguese ships with good equipment and four Siamese ships were forced to anchor at the Inner Harbour of Macao, rusting and rotting away under wind and wave. Their owners did not dare to move them even a little, fearing the Qing government's severe punishment. Later on, in order to maintain their livelihood, the Portuguese had to set out to sea despite of enormous risk. The Guangdong authorities punished these offenders severely. In accordance with the records of some European historical books, ten Portuguese ships were burnt and many others were confiscated for setting out to sea in violation of the ban. Thus, all the Portuguese could do was to smuggle goods by bribing Chinese officials, and the Guangdong authorities seized the opportunity to blackmail them wantonly, until the situation became unbearable. At that time, King Pingnan, whose name was Shang Kexi, commanded the Qing army in Guangdong. He found that trading with the Portuguese could get overseas rare goods, so he traded with them secretly. But this illegal trade was strictly controlled by Shang Kexi, and the profits the Portuguese could gain from it was very limited.

At such an impasse, the Portuguese eagerly hoped that the Qing government could make them an exception and let them go out to sea to trade. Not long after the Qing government imposed the ban on maritime trade, the Portuguese authorities in Macao sent someone to Goa, complaining to the Portuguese Viceroy to India about their poverty and difficulties. The Portuguese Viceroy to India sent Manuel de Saldanha as an envoy to China with a large number of precious and valuable presents in the name of the King of Portugal. When he arrived in Macao in 1667, the Portuguese authorities in Macao also provided him with 30,000 taels of silver as a fund for connections in China. After his arrival in Beijing in 1670, he observed the rite of the Qing government, and kowtowed before the Kangxi Emperor, but nothing came of it. The Portuguese had tried everything; they still were not able to get permission to go to sea, and naturally their trade with China could not expand.

In 1668, after Spain and Portugal signed a peace treaty, the Portuguese in Macao hoped to revitalize the trade with the Philippines. At the beginning of the resumption of trade, harmonious relations did exist between the Portuguese and the Spanish for some time, and the Portuguese could make some money out of it. However, because of the Qing government's ban on maritime trade, it was very difficult for the Portuguese to obtain Chinese specialties like silk cloth, tea and so on; moreover, they suffered extensively from the Guangdong authorities' blackmail and restrictions, so the trade between Macao and the Philippines was unable to go on smoothly. Before long, the traditional hostility between Portugal and Spain erupted again, and this trade could no longer bring so much profit as decades ago. The hope of the Portuguese to revitalize Macao through the trade with the Philippines vanished into thin air.

The English merchants coming to the Far East became more and more active in the late 1650s. So the Portuguese changed their attitude towards the English a little, hoping that through allowing the English to come and trade, Macao's economy could be revitalized. But the English did not want to be controlled by others, this new policy failed too. In 1658, two English merchant ships left in a hurry, because they refused to pay taxes to the Chinese authorities. Not only did the Portuguese failed to do any business with the English, they were even forced to pay a large sum of money as taxes for the English, as the Chinese authorities vented their anger on them.

Six years later, four English merchant ships of the East India Company arrived in Macao. The English on board refused to compensate the tax money owed to the Portuguese with the excuse that the former ships were not of the same company. They only paid 6% of the total value of the goods carried by the four ships as taxes for themselves. Even so the Portuguese provided them with special conveniences. They even gave the English an exceptional favour: allowing them to move their goods ashore to a warehouse. Because the Chinese goods available in the Macao were rather few in quantity and dear in price, and the Guangdong authorities surrounded the warehouse with troops to force the English to pay taxes, this group of English merchants left Macao disappointed. Other English merchants therefore hesitated to come, and preferred Taiwan and Xiamen, which were occupied by the descendants of Zheng Chenggong.

During the ten years after 1664, the only English merchant ship to sail to Macao was the ship "Return", which came to Macao in the autumn of 1673. Because the Portuguese had no money, no trade was carried out either. Henceforth, the Portuguese no longer placed much hope on the English. In the meantime, the Portuguese Goa authorities issued an order prohibiting the Macaonese from trading with the English without permission and the Qing government reiterated the ban on maritime trade. So when the English merchant ship "Carolina" arrived at Macao in June 1683, the Portuguese Governor of Macao, Belchior de Amaral de Menezes, told the English merchants: without a special permission from the Viceroy of India, he could not allow the English to trade at Macao. Otherwise he would take the risk of being arrested, sent back to Portugal and executed. In May 1684, the English merchant ship "Delight" arrived at Taipa. After six days' fruitless discussion between the English merchants and the Portuguese authorities, the English ship had to leave. It is thus clear that the English merchants' coming to China to trade did not do Macao any good.

The Portuguese were unexpectedly rescued from the desperate situation by their trade with the countries in the Southeast Asia, which had developed since the 1650s. At that time, the Portuguese had gained a colonial foothold in Timor. Purchasing gold, bee wax, and especially sandalwood, which was treasured by the Buddhist countries, from Timor and the Greater and Lesser Sunda Islands and selling them in Southeast Asian countries became a profitable business. And North and South Vietnam, which had a civil war for a long time, became the big buyers of cannon and other goods from Macao. In 1651, the Vietnamese shipped 1,250 kilograms of copper to Macao, asking the Manoel Bocarro Foundry to cast the copper into a big cannon rarely seen at the time. Macao's trade with Cambodia also had developed, and Macao's trade with Siam developed especially fast. The relationship between the Portuguese and the King of Siam was intimate. The trade voyage between Macao and Siam became the lifeline of Macao. Especially in 1660, when the Portuguese were in a desperate situation, the King of Siam did not hesitate in lending a large amount of silver and local products to the Portuguese, enabling them to pay the huge bribes extorted by the Guangdong officials from 1662 to 1666, in the early days of the maritime ban imposed by Qing government. The bribes enabled the Macaonese to avoid moving inland and enabled the precarious settlement to survive.

It is worth pointing out that during this period of economic depression and the ensuing period a large number of Chinese literati of Han nationality entered Macao. The peak period of Han immigrants started in 1645. At that time, with the Qing army marching south and the King Fu's government collapsing, the unification of China by the Manchu nobles was only a matter of time. At this time, many persons of ideals and integrity of the Han nationality preferred to leave their native place and roam about abroad rather than became docile subjects of the Manchu aristocrats. Macao was the place from which they fled abroad. In 1645 alone, about 40,000 people arrived in Macao, so that the population of Macao reached 50,000 with most of them awaiting ships to go overseas. According to some records, at the end of 1645, there were 3,000 Han people including 750 women leaving Macao for India via Indonesia in seven Portuguese ships. For the sake of having the blessing and protection of the goddess, they repaired and renovated the A-Ma Temple in a large scale that year.

Some persons of high ideals and integrity of the Han nationality wanted to carry out activities to topple the Qing and restore the Ming in this area, because the rule of the Qing government was less formidable here. Huo Lucheng, whom the Qing officials called "Macao bandit", started an uprising in the area around Macao. His forces were quite strong for some time, and even the Viceroy and Governor of Guangdong were unable to suppress the "bandits". Da Xian with the status of a monk as a cover rebuilt the temple of Guanyin (the Goddess of Mercy) at Mongha into a much larger Kun Iam Temple several years later, using it as a location for the Ming loyalists to assemble. Other persons also made trips to Macao, while they wandered around in the country and abroad. Among them, literati like Chen Gongyi, Tao Huang, He Jiang and Wan Yikai, and painters like Zhang Mu, all wrote poems, because the sight of Macao pulled at their heart-strings. Qu Dajun, who was engaged in the military operation fighting against the Qing for a long time and toured Macao a little later, recorded Macao's geography and history, and the customs of the Portuguese in detail in his Guangdong Xinyu (New Stories of Guangdong), leaving quite valuable materials.

Meanwhile, some Chinese Catholics came to Macao to study the Catholic creed. The most famous were the painter Wu Li, whose Portuguese name was Sinion Xavier, and Lu Xiyan. They followed a missionary to Macao from inland in 1680, to study theology and other subjects at St. Paul's University College. During their studies, Wu Li wrote a poetry anthology Aozhong Zayong (Miscellaneous Poems in Macao), and Lu Xiyan wrote Aomen Ji (The Notes of Macao) in refined language. In addition, another Chinese scholar, Zheng Manuo, whose Portuguese name was Manuel Seqerira, went to Rome to study theology in 1645, and became the first Chinese scholar to study in the West.

So for quite a long period, the Portuguese failed to rejuvenate Macao. By 1680, forty years had passed since Macao first fell into economic difficulties. At that time, Lu Xiyan described in his Aomen Ji the desolate scene of Macao:

If such a situation went on without a change for a long time, it would be very difficult for the Portuguese to continue their stay in Macao. That was why the Portuguese, who had deep feelings for Macao, even had the desperate idea of giving up the city and moving their settlement to Siam.

In the autumn of 1678, the Portuguese envoy Pento Pereira de Faria arrived in Beijing after four years' travel. He presented a lion to the Kangxi Emperor and told the emperor about the poverty of the Macaonese, "asking for a restarting of trade so as to help the merchants from afar". The emperor granted the request. Therefore, at the end of 1680, when the Zhengs' regime in Taiwan was already declining, the Qing government opened the trade on land between Macao and the interior.

While trading on land, Portuguese ships were allowed to anchor at Qianshan Stronghold. The imports and exports had to be transported to or from Xiangshan by porter and small boat. The Qing government set up a customs office at Qianshan Stronghold in the charge of civil and military officials selected by the Administration Commissioner of Guangdong Province. In the first year, when trade was opened, the customs office only collected 24.4 taels silver of taxes; but in the second year, the revenue increased to 12,200 taels and in the fourth year to 20,250 taels, which approached what was collected annually from Macao during the Wanli Emperor period (1573-1619) of the Ming dynasty and the increase in customs revenue showed that by 1684 the trade between Macao and the interior had basically recovered. The Macao economy, which had been bogged down for a long time, had begun to take a turn for the better.

In 1683, the Qing government unified Taiwan. At the beginning of 1684, Du Zhen, Silang (Vice Minister of the Ministry of Personnel), Shi Zhu, Neige Xueshi (Grand Secretary) and others inspected Fujian and Guangdong, and one of their aims was to investigate whether the overseas trade in Canton and Macao should be restored or not. During Shi Zhu's inspection of Macao, the Portuguese officials, kneeling, expressed their intention to abide by law and contribute anything they could to the court, so as to repay the bounties bestowed by the emperor. On returning to the capital, Du Zhen, Shi Zhu and others reported to the emperor. The Qing government completely lifted the ban on foreign trade in the same year, and in 1685, the Qing government opened Macao in Guangdong, Zhangzhou in Fujian, Ningbo in Zhejiang and Yuntaishan in Jiangnan as ports for foreign trade.

After the establishment of a Guangdong customs office in the same year, Chinese officials set up a customs branch office in Macao in 1688, which was under the command of the Guangdong customs. The reason given was that "Macao was a place where the foreigners assembled, and it was of critical importance in checking the ships entering Macao to trade and in questioning evildoers coming and going." The official in charge of this customs office was selected by the General of Canton. Because the Chinese government had never set up a customs office in Macao before, some Portuguese attempted to get rid of it. Being incited by some Portuguese officials, a group of Portuguese soldiers assembled in front of the Chinese customs office, blustering truculently. Luckily, the customs official handling the establishment of this office was calm and composed, and because the Portuguese authorities knew very well that they were no match for the Chinese government in any confrontation, they dispelled the trouble-makers and calmed down this incident quickly.

At that time, the Chinese customs mainly collected "ship fees" and "goods taxes" from foreign merchant ships. The Chinese government considered that the Portuguese, who lived in Macao for a long time, were after all different from other foreigners. So when the customs office in Macao was established, the Qing government gave Portuguese merchant ships in Macao preferential treatment in the form of a much lower tax rate than that charged the ships of other countries. In 1698, the Kangxi Emperor declared:

In 1699, the Qing government lowered Macao's "ship fees" to match those applied on to Chinese merchant ships in Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, and divided all the Macao merchant ships into three grades. A large Portuguese merchant ship only had to pay 3,000 to 4,000 taels of silver as ship fee instead of 20,000 to 30,000 taels of silver usually charged the foreign ships. In the meantime, the Qing government allowed the Portuguese to move the goods carried to Macao into warehouses after registration and let them collect extra goods taxes as revenue for the Portuguese authorities to pay the salaries of officers and soldiers in Macao. The Chinese customs would not collect the goods taxes until the goods were taken out of Macao by the Chinese merchants, so that the burden would be borne by the Chinese merchants instead of the Portuguese. In order to prevent graft and embezzlement by the Chinese officials, the Chinese customs published the tax regulations openly and made them known to all the Portuguese.

The other Western merchants coming to China were denied such a preferential treatment. They had to pay three times more "ship fees" for the ships of the same tonnage as the Portuguese. Besides the ship fees, they had to pay goods taxes to Chinese customs at once. With the ship fees and goods taxes put together, a foreign merchant ship usually had to pay 20,000 to 30,000 taels of silver, roughly eight times what a Portuguese ship in Macao paid. In addition, according to the decree of the Qing government, in principle, all the other Western merchants had to leave China with their ships. Only those who had unfinished business could temporarily lease houses from the Portuguese in Macao. The rent must have been at least equal to the land rent the Portuguese paid to the Chinese authorities. Such being the case, the Portuguese in Macao not only had the geographical advantage, but also enjoyed great preferential treatment in taxation. Therefore, they had a great advantage in trade competition with other Western merchants, and Macao had a chance for a quick recovery.

However, after more than thirty years, Macao still had not shaken off its poverty. The failure to revive stemmed partly from strong competition from Chinese merchants who were able to go to Timor, Jarkata and other places, and partly from the continued Portuguese royal monopoly in trade, which denied Macaonese the opportunity to trade in Portugal proper and in its various colonies. In addition, the Portuguese in Macao committed many major mistakes during this period.

First, Macao's importance as a port for the Chinese-foreign trade was hurt by the strenuous efforts of the Portuguese to exclude merchant ships from other countries. In 1686, after the lifting of the ban on maritime trade, the Portuguese officials in Macao told the Guangdong Customs Inspector Yiergetu:

They strongly opposed allowing merchants ships from other Western countries to sail into the harbours of Macao, in an attempt to prevent other Western countries from developing trade with China. At first, the Guangdong authorities refused to this request. In 1688, hearing that a Dutch merchant ship directing her course to the Inner Harbour of Macao had been fired at by the Fortress of Barra, the Guangdong Customs Inspector immediately summoned the Procurator of Macao to Qianshan Stronghold. The Chinese officials scolded the Portuguese for defying the imperial instruction allowing various countries in the world to trade with china and ordered the Portuguese to let the Dutch trade in Macao. The Portuguese officials disobeyed the order, so the Guangdong authorities dispatched a naval force to press Macao. The Portuguese Governor of Macao had to resort to bribery to tide over the crisis, and decided not to prevent that Dutch merchant ship from entering Macao any longer. And the Fortress of Barra fired salute guns when the Dutch ship sailed into the Inner Harbour.

In the meantime, the Portuguese tried to manipulate people in power in Beijing to make the Qing government approve their request not to allow merchant ships from other countries to anchor at Macao. Thus in 1689, when the English merchant ship "Defence" arrived at the mouth of the Pearl River, the Guangdong Customs Inspector allowed that ship to sail to Huangpu in the eastern suburbs of Canton. Only because the Captain of the ship refused to go into the Pearl River and acted wantonly in Macao, did an armed conflict between the Chinese and the English take place, preventing the English ship from trading. Afterwards, the English ship "Loyal Merchant" arrived at Huangpu in 1690; then a French ship, "L'Amphitrite", reached Huangpu in 1698. In 1699, the Guangdong Customs Inspector went to Macao personally to measure an English merchant ship anchoring there, and offered a reduction of ship fees to persuade the merchants to trade in Canton. By then, besides the Portuguese and Spanish ships, the merchant ships of other countries like England and France all could sail to Huangpu, to be checked by Guangdong customs, after obtaining a licence at the Chinese customs office at Macao. Having paid their ship fees and import duties, the foreign merchant ships could directly trade with the Chinese firms in Canton designated by the Guangdong authorities.

Compared with the merchants of other countries who had to keep their goods on board and to leave within a certain period when their goods had been sold, the Portuguese still enjoyed much greater freedom, as they could enter inland to trade, and the Chinese merchants could also go Macao to trade from time to time. But in the trade between China and foreign countries as a whole, Macao was brushed aside, and became merely an outer harbour of Canton and a trading spot for Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish merchants, while Canton became the foremost port for foreign trade in China. Although the Portuguese maintained their special position, and prevented the influence of other Western countries from penetrating into Macao, they also denied Macao the opportunity for an economic revival.

The second mistake the Macaonese made in the late 17th century was to get involved in power struggles in Timor. The death in about 1653 of the aged native Captain-Major of militia in Timor was followed by a long rivalry for leadership among the Portuguese with European-Asian mixed blood. Antonio de Hornay, who won the civil war in 1673, only paid lip service to the Portuguese crown; in fact, he acted like a uncrowned King of Timor, bitterly resented any attempts by the authorities at Goa to enforce their paper control, and even refused to admit successive governors nominated by the Portuguese Viceroy to India. Only his death enabled a government nominee, a Macaonese fidalgo, named Antonio de Mesquita Pimentel, to seize the reins of government from Hornay's brother with the military support from Macao.

But Pimentel's rule proved short-lived. He was expelled by the angry natives for his unmerciful fleecing of the local population and his attempting to murder two of Hornay's bastards. In 1701, Antonio Coelho Guerreiro was appointed as the new Governor of Timor and was ordered to suppress a rebellion there. At that time, the Portuguese power in India was very weak, so Guerreiro brought only fifty soldiers with him when he left India for Timor via Macao. In order to restore their control over Timor, the Portuguese in Macao threw their weight behind Guerreiro. They provided him with various kinds of weapons and instruments at low prices and thirty-two soldiers. After arriving at Timor, Guerreiro had serious clashes with the Dutch nearby, and was besieged by the rebels for a long time. He sent someone to Goa to ask for help, but failed to get any reinforcements. Only the Portuguese in Macao spare nothing in their efforts to support him. When Guerreiro was finally driven out of Timor in 1704, the Portuguese in Macao suffered a major loss as well.

According to contemporary records, this war, which lasted more than ten years, ruined Macao. Macao's stock of men and money was exhausted: of the 1,000 citizens before the war, the city had fewer than fifty were left at the end of it; and out of forty sails of the trading ships, no more than five remained. After the war, the Portuguese Population in Macao was rather small: only two hundred laity, six hundred priests and 15,000 women including new comers. According to the records of another book, in 1704, Macao "was left with only two ships that could neither be manned or fitted out". It is very clear that Macao's vitality was greatly hurt by its involvement in this meaningless war in Timor.

Third, the continued internal strife among the Portuguese in Macao seriously affected social stability and economic development. At that time, the internal strife mostly stemmed from the power struggle among the Governor, the Ouvidor and the Senate. According to a royal decree issued by the King of Portugal in the 16th century and confirmed in 1665 and 1675, the governorship of Macao was used as dowry for Portuguese young ladies whose fathers had perished in the military or civil services in India. The fidalgos who married such females could be appointed as the Governor of Macao. Therefore, these governors always thought that the post should be a source of money, and they extorted money from the residents by trickery or by force, which caused the disgust of the public. Some more ambitious governors were dissatisfied with their status as a military commander, and tried to compete for power with the Senate, often leading to bloodshed. The post of Ouvidor, which had been abolished half a century ago, was restored in 1702. Holders of the post attempted from time to time to increase their power, causing frictions with the Senate. Because of the frequent conflicts and many scandals, in 1709, the King of Portugal issued a decree, stipulating that the administrative and financial power belonged to the Senate, and the Governor should not poke his nose into it.

However, the power struggle among the governor, ouvidor and Senate did not calm down. Diogo de Pinho, who assumed the governorship of Macao in 1706, acted even more wantonly and recklessly. He defied the decree of the monarch and even intervened in the election of the Senate in 1710. The Senate protested against such unbridled arrogance. Teixeira prepared to arrest the Senators, forcing them to seek asylum in the Jesuit's college. Afterwards, the Governor summoned the citizens to the Citadel, and held an illegal election, so that Macao had two Senates at the same time. When the newly elected Senators and other citizens also escaped to the college one after another, Teixeira immediately announced that the Senators seeking asylum were no longer senators, and ordered the Jesuits to drive them out. When the Jesuits refused to obey, he dispatched sentries to encircle the college and urged his men to enter the school by force. The Jesuits stressed their privilege, pointing out that it was illegal to break into the college by force. But he paid no attention to their protest, ordered warships to fire at the college gate and planned to raze the college with the guns of the Citadel. Luckily, through the intercession of the Macao Bishop and appeals from clergy and gentry, the tense situation alleviated a bit. But the situation deteriorated again on June 24, when the mediation meeting sponsored by the Bishop failed. On June 29, troops led by the governor suppressed the General Council convened by the Senate, but met the resistance of the armed citizens. Then, Teixeira outrageously ordered the Citadel to open fire at the Senate House, resulting in one dead and many wounded. The tocsin tolled. The Macao Bishop hurriedly sent a priest with the Host to the Citadel, forcing Teixeira to kneel down to pray; further bloodshed was prevented.

The Senators, who had been forced to sign the capitulation, did not go out of the seminary to assume their duties until the end of 1710, when Teixeira was recalled by the Portuguese Viceroy to India. However, the new Portuguese Governor of Macao was a bird of like feather, the same as his predecessor in committing all kinds of outrages. In less than one year, after assuming the post, he was sent to Goa under escort for his crimes he had committed. Protracted social disorder made many citizens feel disheartened about the future. Many citizens went to other places to earn their living.

As a result, the city's prospects became gloomier than ever. Beginning in 1709, in order to prevent Macao from collapsing economically, the King of Portugal Joao V had to give some trade privileges to the Portuguese in Macao. For instance, some Macao merchant ships going to India to trade were exempted from ship tax in Goa for some time; the royal monopoly of trade between China and Portugal was temporarily waived, and the merchants of Macao could freely trade with those from Portugal proper. But these privileges were insignificant, and they could not halt Macao's decline. In 1714, the Portuguese Viceroy to India had no choice but to allow 5% of the revenues in Macao, which was formerly contributed to the royal treasury, to be used for municipal, military, church and charity expenditures by the Senate in Macao. In 1716, the Senate in Macao asked Lisbon for emergency aid, pointing out that otherwise the best Portuguese settlement in the Far East would perish.

During this period of protracted decline, some Portuguese were still eager to expand their colonial privileges in Macao. First, they imposed many restrictions on the Chinese people who had returned to reside in Macao from inland. Because of the lifting of the ban on maritime trade, the Chinese who had been forced to move inland during the evacuation of the coastal area returned to the Macao Peninsula one after another. In order to have Macao occupied by the Portuguese alone, the Portuguese authorities placed more and more strict restrictions upon the Chinese returning to Macao. They debarred the Chinese from acquiring landed properties in Macao, prohibited the sale of houses to the Chinese, redeemed Portuguese real estate mortgaged to the Chinese, and only allowed Chinese registered with the Senate to reside in Macao. In 1711, the Portuguese authorities even ordered the demolition of the houses let to the Chinese, and requested Chinese officials to pull down the houses built and owned by the Chinese.

Meanwhile, as the number of Portuguese males in Macao was declining all the time, many Portuguese women married Chinese men. In order to prevent these quickly Westernized Chinese males, especially the children of mixed blood, from occupying a dominant position in Macao in the future, the Portuguese in Macao asked the King of Portugal to take measures necessary to ensure that the officials in Macao, high and low, should have pure Portuguese blood. In 1689, Pedro II made the following stipulations about the qualification of the Portuguese officials in Macao: they had to be old Catholics, had to have Portuguese nationality and blood. However, it was too difficult to persist in this principle. So the Joao V issued an edict in 1709 stipulating that if the candidates for the Senate did not have the above qualifications, they had to be educated persons who had served Portugal and made important contributions to Macao.

In the meantime, the Portuguese tried all the possible means to shake off the control of the Chinese government. In 1689, the Portuguese Viceroy to India issued an order forbidding Portuguese at Macao to obey the summons of the Chinese authorities. The reasons for issuing the order was that two Portuguese were summoned to Canton in 1686 for employing Chinese craftsmen to make fusils without permission, and the Senators of Macao were summoned to Qianshan Stronghold in 1688 to answer for Macao's firing at the Dutch merchant ships with guns. In 1712, Joao V reiterated this ban. Thereafter, the Portuguese no longer obeyed the summons of the Chinese authorities, and whenever there was something important, it was always the Chinese officials that went to Macao to deal with.

From the beginning of the 18th century, the Portuguese authorities even refused to send Portuguese who had killed Chinese to the Chinese authorities to be executed in Canton. In 1710, having received a bribe of 120 taels of silver, the Magistrate of Xiangshan County set a precedent by executing a Portuguese criminal in Macao in front of the Chinese and Portuguese officials and the family members of the victim. Two years later, the Chinese executioners were replaced by Portuguese counterparts. That year, a black slave who had killed a Chinese was blown to pieces at the muzzle of a gun of the Citadel, and all the Chinese officials did was to carry out the trial and to watch. Thereafter, Portuguese murderers were all kept in captivity by the Portuguese themselves after they had been tried by the officials of the Xiangshan County; they were no longer sent to Canton for a review of the case and execution. And the officials of the Xiangshan County usually neither reported the case nor sent. Even if a case was reported, the facts would be altered, a severe crime would be reported as a minor offence to avoid the requirement that criminals be executed in Canton. Under such circumstances, many Portuguese murderers committing serious crimes were sentenced lightly, because they were both shielded by the Portuguese officials and let off easy by the Chinese officials.

It is worth pointing out that the Qing dynasty in its prime took no actions against the Portuguese for grabbing more privileges in Macao. There are many reasons for this. On the one hand, some of Portuguese actions did not conflict with the Qing government's policy. For instance, the Qing officials were always opposed to the mixing of Chinese and foreigners. They took an cooperative attitude towards the action of the Portuguese to drive the Chinese out of Macao, pulled down the houses built and owned by the Chinese in Macao, and several times limited the number of Chinese employees allowed to work in Macao.

On the other hand, the Portuguese actions were mostly carried out on the sly. On the surface, the Portuguese showed obedience to the Chinese emperor and Guangdong officials. For example, in 1691, when the Kangxi Emperor decided to increase the land rent of Macao from 500 to 600 taels of silver, the Portuguese did as required, because they thought it would be to no avail to resist. When the Kangxi Emperor had a new baby prince or celebrated his sixtieth birthday, the Portuguese followed the instructions of the local Chinese officials, ordering all their fortresses in Macao to fire salutes and the churches to ring festival bells. In 1714, they conveyed their best wishes to His Majesty according to the Chinese ritual, kowtowing before five Chinese officials who had come to Macao from Beijing. The Kangxi Emperor was pleased and exempted them from land rent for one year. Therefore, the Portuguese encroaching activities escaped the notice of the Qing government.

Meanwhile, the Portuguese also tried their best to protect their so-called patronage in China. As early as the middle of the 17th century, the Vatican attempted to take back its patronage in the Far East, because of the decline of the Portuguese power. The Vatican succeeded quickly in Vietnam and other countries, where the French missionaries supported by the Vatican squeezed the Portuguese out in 1662. But it was a different story with China. In 1658, the Vatican separated the interior of China from the Macao bishopric, and appointed three missionaries of Paris Foreign Mission Society as vicars to take over the religious work in the inland provinces of China. The Portuguese in the Far East were angry and claimed that they would hang before the public the prelates coming to China without the permission of the King of Portugal. Moreover, because the Qing government had strictly banned maritime trade, Macao was the only access to the interior of China. All these made it difficult for French vicars to enter China. In fact, they either died on their way or shrank back from difficulties; not one reached China. In 1674, the Pope appointed Luo Wenzao (Gregory Lopez), a prelate of Chinese nationality, as the Vicar Apostolic of Nanjing. As this appointment was made without the approval of the King of Portugal, Luo Wenzao knew very well that the appointment would be opposed by the Portuguese in Macao, and that there was no hope of winning over the support of the missionaries loyal to the King of Portugal in the Chinese inland. Luo Wenzao had no choice but to decline the appointment. In this period, the Portuguese Prince Regent once agreed to allow Spanish missionaries to enter the Chinese inland via Macao. Because of the stubborn opposition of the Portuguese in Macao, the Prince Regent had to cancel his approval before long.

After the ban on maritime trade was lifted in 1684, Luo Wenzao, who had been reappointed as the Vicar Apostolic of Nanjing, and several French missionaries sent by Louis XIV arrived at Fujian and Zhejiang respectively. The Jesuit missionaries loyal to the King of Portugal and backed by Macao carried out a fierce struggle against the intruders. Due to the deep-rooted influence of the Jesuit missionaries in China and the fact that the other missionaries were unable to contact Europe without the help of Macao, the Vatican was forced to reach a compromise with the King of Portugal, deciding to divide China and the smaller neighbouring countries of China into three bishoprics and seven vicarages, and let the King of Portugal keep the patronage over the three bishoprics of Beijing, Nanjing and Macao.

The struggle between the missionaries, however, still did not come to an end. To beat down their opponents, missionaries from France, Spain and other countries blamed the Jesuits for allowing Chinese followers to revere Heaven, and worshipping their ancestors and Confucius. These missionaries also denounced the Jesuits as betraying Christianity to glorify themselves. The so-called "Rites Controversy" which was started in the later years of the Ming dynasty intensified. In 1705, the Vatican, misjudging the situation, sent Patriarch Charles Thomas Mailard de Tournon to China to forbid Chinese Catholics to revere Heaven and offer sacrifices to their ancestors and Confucius. This foolish action led the Kangxi Emperor to prohibit the spread of Catholicism in China after he sent Tournon back to Macao in 1707. It was natural that the Portuguese authorities in Macao would abhor the Patriarch, who intended to weaken the patronage of Portugal. On instructions from Goa, the Portuguese in Macao confined Tournon in his quarters and firmly suppressed the Augustians and Dominicans, who supported him. In 1710, the hapless Papal Legate died in Macao. So after struggling with the Vatican and other Western powers, the Portuguese maintained part of their patronage in China and kept Macao's status as a base of carrying out missionary work in China.

After enduring a long period of economic depression, the Qing government again banned maritime intercourse with foreign countries, and Macao took an unexpected turn for the better in 1718. In 1716, the Kangxi Emperor thought that the fact that many Chinese merchants had sold their ships and rice to foreigners or remained abroad when they went to Southeast Asia to trade was disadvantageous to China, so he prohibited Chinese merchant ships from sailing to South-east Asian countries. At the beginning of this ban, the Qing government also demanded that the Portuguese in Macao to abide by it, i.e. the Portuguese in Macao were also forbidden to sail to South-east Asian countries. The Portuguese were astonished and hurriedly sent delegates to Canton, asking the Qing government to show special mercy. With the help of the Jesuit missionary Joseph Pereira, the delegates poured out their woes to Yang Lin, the Viceroy of the Two Guangs, and won his sympathy. In 1718, in response to Yang Lin's request, the Qing government gave the Portuguese in Macao special permission to go to South-east Asian countries to trade. The notification was that they were entirely different from the Chinese. But they were forbidden to carry Chinese on board, and if they did, they would be severely punished.

The Portuguese in Macao soon found that they profited from the Qing government's ban although they felt alarmed initially. As Chinese merchants were forbidden to go to the Southeast Asian countries, the Portuguese filled the vacuum, and almost monopolized the trade between China and the Philippines, and between China and Indonesia. In the process of trade, they reaped huge profits through exporting raw silk and silk fabrics, which were always very popular in various countries, and tea, which the Europeans were very fond of. Tea was resold to Europe by the Dutch through entrepot trade via Jakarta.

Coincidentally, because of repeated requests from the Macaonese several years before, in 1719, Joao V allowed them to send two merchant ships to Portugal and two merchant ships to Brazil per years in five years. The terms of the charter were harsh, e.g. the Macaonese ships were forbidden to carry any goods to Angola, to export gold or silver from Portugal or Brazil, and to dispose of goods at Goa and so on. Especially, they had to defray the cost of an intended Portuguese envoy to China. Nevertheless, it was not without certain advantage to the Portuguese in Macao.

What was even more fortunate was that the Governor of Macao from 1718 to 1719 was a remarkable fidalgo, Antonio de Albuquerque Coelho. He was the former first Alderman in Macao, and was forced to go to Goa to answer political opponents' accusations not long before. Instead of taking revenge upon his enemies, he worked in full cooperation with the Senate, and properly handled various affairs of the city. So Macao entered its most stable period politically since the middle of the 17th century.

In these favourable conditions, the Portuguese in Macao developed their business quickly. The number of merchant ships registered in Macao increased from the original nine to twenty-three in one year and further to twenty-five before long. In addition, the population of the Portuguese in Macao, which had declined steadily in the past, picked up suddenly, reaching 3,567 in 1724. The tax revenue of the Portuguese authorities increased dramatically as well, reaching 20,000 taels of silver or so a year. Therefore, the Portuguese authorities were able to run charity institutions, like a female orphan asylum. They also set up a bank with the increased revenue, providing the merchants with respondentia, and that could secure them 20% interest per half year. By 1730, the Portuguese local treasury showed a surplus, which was also used as respondentia. As if by miracle, Macao was again full of vitality all of sudden, after getting poorer and poorer for more than half a century.With the opportunity they had not met for decades, the Portuguese in Macao all attempted to make a fortune at once, so the rivalries were fierce. In 1720, the top officials of the city decided that they would monopolize the trade with Manila, Batavia and Timor, leaving the minor ports to merchants of inferior credit. This barefaced selfishness met strong opposition from medium and small businessmen, and was reproved by the Portuguese court of Goa, which ruled that the Macaonese merchant ships should go to various trading ports in turn. The Portuguese Governor of Macao from 1719 to 1722, Antonio da Silva Telo e Menezes, was even greedier. He wielded the sword and jerked the scales at the same time, and "managed his business so dexterously as to secure to himself the benefit of profitable sea and trading voyages", which again stimulated the common indignation of the Portuguese merchants in Macao. Due to complaints from Macao, King Joao V had to stop the governor's behaviour by a letter dated the third of September, 1720, in which he declared: "the Governor is allowed to trade neither in his own name nor that of any other person". However, to the disappointment of the Macaonese, this prohibition was of little or no avail.

In the fifth year after Macao's economic revival, the Kangxi Emperor died of illness. By order of the Chinese authorities, the civil and military officials in Macao were all in mourning for three months. When the new monarch assumed the throne, the expected in-fighting for the throne, which would have affected Macao, did not take place in China. The Portuguese, who had made years' preparations for it, finally relaxed a little. However, not long after assuming the throne, the Yongzheng Emperor changed many of his father's policies. According to the suggestion of Manbao, the Viceroy of Zhejiang and Fujian, in 1723, the first year after Yongzheng assumed the throne, the new emperor ordered all the Western missionaries to move to Canton and Macao. Only Europeans with a mastery of art and technology were allowed to serve in the court. Soon afterwards, at the beginning of 1724, fearing that "the Portuguese in Macao, with an ever-increasing population, might harbour evil intentions", Liang Wenke, an official in Beijing, presented a memorial to the throne, suggesting: "we have no choice but to be strictly on guard against the foreigners in Macao so as to prevent hidden dangers". On this memorial, the Yongzheng Emperor commented that "it is not appropriate to place the Westerners in Guangdong, and the means of supervising the foreign ships is even more problematic". He promoted Kong Yuxun to the Viceroy of the Two Guangs and ordered him "to try his best to deal with these problems appropriately one by one".

After inspecting the sea-lane and fortresses around Macao, in successive memorials to the throne, Kong Yuxun pointed out that the guard against Macao was quite strict already; the Portuguese in Macao "abide by law and pay taxes, and they might be counted as fairly good subjects". Therefore, it was not necessary to station military officials in Macao to superintend them, as Liang Wenke had suggested. Nonetheless, after they had secured the monopoly over the trade with Southeast Asian countries, Portuguese merchant ships were increasing all the time, for they often built or bought ships in other countries in recent years. Such being the case, they might become too greedy, and Macao "would inevitably lure domestic treacherous persons, attract more foreigners and create a confused situation, thus gradually causing more and more troubles". Therefore, Kong Yuxun suggested that the twenty-five ships Macao had at the time should be registered, branded with numbers, and given a certificate with the names of the owner, steersman, seamen and merchants on it. Thereafter, other than the ships to replace ones that had really rotted away, as certified by the Guangdong authorities, no new ships would be allowed to be built. In the meantime, except a few Portuguese officials who came to replace their predecessors, no more foreigners were allowed to live in Macao. If there should be any violation, not only would the Chinese and Portuguese involved be punished for the crime of colluding with the enemy, but the relevant Chinese officials would also be punished for neglecting their duty.

These proposals were approved by the Yongzheng Emperor in 1725. The twenty-five ships in Macao were all numbered with "Xiang" (Xiangshan) as the initial character, and the names and owners were registered with the Chinese authorities. When sailing out, they would have to report to the Chinese coastal garrison and the military officers guarding the entrance would check the number of the ship, the number of people on board, their names and whether there were any forbidden goods or Chinese going abroad illegally; when sailing in, the military officers would check the number of the ship, the number of people on board and their names and whether there were foreigners who were forbidden to enter Macao to reside. The officers had to deliver a written report about Macao ships to the Viceroy of the Two Guangs and the Governor of Guangdong. After the adoption of these measures, the Qing government's rule over Macao was strengthened to a certain degree. But the restrictions such as prohibiting the Portuguese to build more merchant ships inevitably hurt the economy of Macao.

Soon afterwards, in 1727, the Yongzheng Emperor implemented new policies that had an even greater effect upon Macao. The ban on the trade with Southeast Asian countries caused serious social problems in southeastern China. After 1727, at the repeated request of Kong Yuxun, the Viceroy of the Two Guangs, and Gao Qizhuo, the Viceroy of Zhejiang and Fujian Provinces, the Qing government lifted this ban in Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang in succession, undermining the Portuguese monopoly over the trade with Southeast Asian countries. The Portuguese were forced to compete with the Chinese merchants, who had various advantages over them.

In the process of competition, the Chinese merchants not only scrambled for overseas markets with the Portuguese, but also for domestic resources of goods, causing a great shortage of raw silk, silk fabrics and other products in the domestic market. For this and other reasons, beginning in 1730, the Qing government prohibited the Western ships from trafficking in commodities like gold, iron pots, raw silk and silk fabrics. Although the ban on raw silk and silk fabrics was later revoked, each merchant ship was restricted to a limited amount. About at that time, in order to further tighten its control, the Qing government also restricted the amount of goods the Chinese merchants could transport to Macao for sale. For example, they could carry no more than 30 piculs of brocade each time and no more than 70 piculs of tea.

Since the Portuguese in Macao had difficulties in getting raw silk and silk fabrics, the most popular Chinese products, they fell into a rather sorry plight. The rejuvenation of Macao had mainly relied upon the ban on the Chinese merchants trading in Southeast Asian. With the lifting of the ban, Macao's economy declined once more.

In addition, Portuguese misbehaviour also accounted for Macao's decline. First, it was the Portuguese authorities in Macao themselves that missed the opportunity to assure Macao's lasting prosperity. In 1717, the Qing government planned to move all the foreign firms in Canton to Macao and to collect taxes there, making Macao a centre for China's foreign trade. Perhaps to maintain their local privileges, the Portuguese authorities rejected the suggestion, which might have made Macao the pivot of trade between China and foreign countries again. The decision was even criticized by some Portuguese at the time as "short-sighted".

Second, Macao fell into protracted disturbance again after Antonio de Aluquesque Coelho left his post in 1719. Dom Christovao de Severim Manuel, who assumed the governorship of Macao in 1722, was a extravagant and dissipated despot. Shortly after he became governor, quite a few Portuguese prepared to give up the settlement in Macao to go to the inland of China, so as to escape his tyranny. Later on, the Senate of Macao sent a delegation to Lisbon to accuse him of various crimes, eventually leading to his trial. Several years later, fierce struggles broke out between the Governor, Antoniode Amaral Menezes, and the Ouvidor and the Senate. The intervention of officials from Goa only made things worse, like adding fuel to the flame. The chaos was so terrible that the governor left Macao secretly without informing anyone, which made the Macao Bishop, Dom Joao do Casal, become the acting governor of Macao in 1735. Such endless chaos had badly affected Macao's economy.

Third, the Portuguese in Macao still suffered from the royal monopoly over trade. In 1725, after the Portuguese in Macao sent merchant ships to Portugal and Brazil five times in succession, the King Joao V discontinued that trade privilege. The scope of trade of the Portuguese in Macao became rather narrow; they were limited to the Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Siam and the Philippines, and were not allowed to trade in Africa, Europe and Latin America. As the Chinese at that time said:

Under such circumstances, it was even more difficult to extend Macao's revival.

The Portuguese tried hard to keep the privileges in Macao and maintain the rejuvenation. In 1718, through the Jesuits in Beijing, they explored the possibility of providing the Qing government with two Western ships to help put down the pirates along the coast of Guangdong, in exchange for exemption from land rent and ship fees. This unequal exchange was rejected by the Kangxi Emperor. But because the Portuguese had presented two guns to the Qing government, they were exempted from land rent for one year and thereafter, their land rent was reduced to the original 500 taels of silver a year. In 1719, they sent an envoy with many presents to Beijing to express their thanks to the Kangxi Emperor for allowing them to go to Southeast Asian countries to trade and for the consolidation of their status in Macao.

In 1724, when the Yongzheng Emperor expelled many missionaries, the Portuguese authorities were afraid that the Chinese emperor might take further action to retrieve Macao, so they asked Joao V to send an ambassador to China to make friendly contact with the Chinese emperor. The Ambassador, Alexander Metello de Souza e Menezes, who arrived in Beijing via Macao in 1727, presented a large number of valuable gifts to the Yongzheng Emperor and implored the Chinese government to protect the Portuguese in Macao and in the interior of China. The Yongzheng Emperor approved the request to allow the Westerners to continue to stay in Macao. When Metello returned to Macao, the emperor instructed the local officials to treat him better than other foreign ambassadors. The Portuguese in Macao were very grateful. On the birthday of the Yongzheng Emperor, they did Mass in the church for His Majesty to wish him a long life.

This mission, however, cost the Portuguese in Macao 30,000 taels of silver, of which 25,300 taels were contributed by Macao, surpassing the sum total of its years' surplus of revenue and forcing the Senate to mortgage the future revenue for the balance. Through these activities, the Portuguese obtained an approval from the Chinese Emperor in a critical time to allow them to reside in Macao, but they actually failed to maintain the economic prosperity of Macao.

Finally, since the lifting of the ban on maritime trade, both during the protracted depression and in the short period of revival, Macao to a certain degree resumed its role as a bridge facilitating the flow of cultures between China and West. When the Qing government was first established, the government selected the Westerners in Macao who were proficient in calculation to serve in the Directorate of Astronomy in Beijing. Some capable Western missionaries also went to other Chinese cities via Macao. One of them was Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest, who became the head of the Directorate of Astronomy afterwards. While the coast was evacuated, legal cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries almost ceased. In 1661, the famous Jesuit, Jean Adam Schall von Bell, had to let Jesuit Johann Grueber take his three volumes of reminiscences back to Rome via Tibet and Persia. After the lifting of the ban on maritime trade, the Kangxi Emperor paid more attention to the employment of able Western scholars. He instructed the Guangdong officials over and again that they should select and escort the Westerners with real ability and learning to Beijing as soon as possible. Jesuits who were proficient in particular fields such as astronomy, mathematics, medicine, fine art and others came to Beijing via Macao in an endless stream.

When entering Chinese inland, the Jesuits usually brought with them the latest Western achievements in science and technology, or new books including medical books published at the end of 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, and new medicines like quinine, which cured Kangxi's malaria. After they came to China, they and their Chinese colleagues together fulfilled quite a few projects which were brilliant in world cultural history. For instance, many of the Jesuits took part in the map-making work of Huangyu Quanlaitu (The Atlas of China). This ambitious project took from 1707 to 1718 to accomplish. It was the most accurate map in the world at the time. The Italian Jesuit, Giuseppe Castiglione, who came to China in 1715, became a very famous palace painter, disseminating Western techniques of perspective in China. He and another Jesuit, Michael Benoist, who came to China later, assisted by Chinese artisans and workers, designed and constructed an elegant European-style palace, called the Ever-Spring Garden, in the imperial Yuanming Garden. So the Yuanming Garden, which was called "the garden with thousands of gardens", was made to be worthy of its name.

In the meantime, Chinese civilization continued to be disseminated to West through Macao. When the French Jesuit, Joachim Bouvet, returned home from Macao in 1694, he alone took 300 volumes of Chinese books in de luxe editions with him. The Jesuits in Beijing sent to Europe via Macao the famous book Compendium of Materia Medica written by Li Shizhen, describing Chinese medicinal materials, and giving directions as how to cook and how to take Chinese herbs. A group of French doctors, who came to Macao at the beginning of the 18th century to practice medicine, made a serious study of the Chinese medical science and the Compendium of Materia Medica. Among them, Jacques-Francois Vandermonde brought the "Mineral" part of the translation manuscript of Compendium of Materia Medica with him, when he returned to Paris in 1732. Later on, this translation influenced French scientists. Other foreigners translated Chinese classical novels and dramas into Western languages and published them in West. A Yuanqu titled as "The Orphan of Zhao Family" was translated into French first, then into English, German and Russian and adapted into a Western drama by F. de Voltaire, Arthur Murphy, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and others. This touching and tragic play of a story in the Spring and Autumn period (770 B.C.- 476 B.C.) in China was performed on the stages in France, England, Germany and other countries one after another.

Because the Qing government had opened four trading ports for some time in the southeast coast of China, many foreign missionaries entered China's interior via Ningbo and Canton. China and Russia carried out trade at Kyakhta, and Russians could go to Beijing directly via the northwest of China as well. Therefore, although Macao still played an important role in the cultural exchanges between China and West, Macao was no longer the only channel as it had been in the Ming dynasty.

After the Chinese merchants began to go to Southeast Asian again, another decline of Macao was accelerated. About ten years after the Qianlong Emperor came to power, the merchant ships in Macao were reduced from twenty-five in the period of rejuvenation to eighteen. Some were blown away by wind, and some could not operate due to a shortage of capital. They were further reduced to thirteen several years later. The decline in trade and the loss of ships bankrupted many Portuguese merchants and the treasury offering respondentia suffered great losses, reaching 320,000 taels of silver in the middle of the 18th century. By the 1740s and the 1750s, the last afterglow of the period of economic rejuvenation was gone, and Macao was destitute once more.