Word: macao
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Tough on Birds. All that Peking officially owned up to was that "the production plan in agriculture was not fulfilled in 1960." But Chinese refugees fleeing into Macao reported that food rations in China are so scanty that "even the birds would find it hard to survive." Worried Hong Kong Chinese are shipping more than 100,000 lbs. of food daily to relatives on the mainland. Peking is urgently seeking freight space to import 330,000 tons of wheat from Australia, 350,000 tons of rice from Burma and 120,000 tons of barley from Canada...
Died. Fu Tak-iam, 67, who started as a Cantonese doughnut peddler and wound up as the gambling czar of Macao by matching yens for fantan, cricket fights (in which trained insects do battle unto death) and cusek-a type of roulette played with dice; of a heart attack; in Hong Kong. A strapping (6 ft., 200 Ibs.) brigand, Fu was ransomed in 1946 for $150,000 when captors sent a slice of his right ear to relatives, but seven years later stalled on paying ransom for his kidnaped son until the gang proved their seriousness by slicing...
Wolf & Son. Center of the Asian gold trade is the Portuguese colony of Macao, where dealers operate openly, since Portugal consistently refuses to sign an international agreement to regulate gold. Since 1946, by the colony's own report, some $601 million worth of gold has poured into-and through-Macao (pop. 200,000). Most of it also passed through the hands of Dr. Pedro Lobo, onetime chief economic officer of Macao, who is credited with monopolizing gold import licenses for Macao's "gold syndicate...
...owners of the single-plane airline that flies gold in from Hong Kong, only 15 air minutes away. On arrival each shipment of gold is meticulously weighed by Portuguese authorities determined to collect the import duty of 42? an ounce, the biggest source of Macao's revenue. After the weighing, the authorities discreetly withdraw. Then the syndicate's employees melt down the international gold bars (usually weighing around 27 lbs.) into the portable 9-oz. bars or thin gold sheets preferred by smugglers...
Over & Back. Chief suppliers of Macao's gold are a clutch of old-line Hong Kong trading firms, which buy it legally on the London gold market at a pegged price, then pass it along to Lobo's syndicate for a "service charge." Gold dealers in Hong Kong say that it is the Portuguese who let the gold slip into illegal channels. The Portuguese, in turn, blandly declare that the bulk of the gold brought into Macao is immediately smuggled back to Hong Kong in junks or on ferries...