Word: macao
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...perches like a nervous hummingbird on the long southeastern rim of Communist China - 61 sq. mi. of uneasy Portuguese suzerainty in a teeming, tumultuous Asian world. This is fabled Macao, a sleepy city of sin, smuggling and games of chance, which, like nearby Hong Kong, is tolerated by Peking mainly as a handy source of hard currency. Thus its 300,000 people live in the knowledge that they might at any time be engulfed by their giant neighbor. "When China breathes," goes one old Macao saying, "we tremble." Last week China breathed, and the tremble was almost seismic...
...first hot breath of trouble came early last month when Peking radio commented acidly that both Macao and Hong Kong occupied "sacred and inviolable" territory of China. Since many of Macao's Chinese population are pro-Peking, it was possibly by design or possibly by chance that a fight broke out two weeks later on Macao's nearby island of Taipa between police and 65 leftist construction workers; amid a melee of flying fists and truncheons, at least 20 persons were injured. Macao's leftist newspapers and labor unions immediately cried "fascist" brutality, and Peking was soon...
Five Red Demands. When Brigadier General Jose Nobre de Carvalho took over late last month as Macao's new Portuguese-appointed Governor, Macao's Communists demanded that the government 1) acknowledge responsibility for the Taipa incident, 2) punish a deputy police chief involved, 3) publicly burn all police truncheons, 4) promise an end to "attacks" on Macao's Chinese, and 5) compensate families of workmen injured during the incident itself...
...study the demands, young Communist students staged two days of mild downtown demonstrations. Then full-scale street riots suddenly erupted on Dec. 3. Chanting "Kill the Portuguese devils!", some 3,000 Red Guard-style demonstrators smashed store windows, tipped over every car in sight, pulled down statues, and sacked Macao's City Hall. The next day-early last week-5,000 took to the streets, and before order was restored eight were dead. At week's end De Carvalho had accepted the five demands and Macao was calm again, though the nervousness and unrest remained...
What was it all about? Was Red China planning to "liberate" Macao? Humiliate the Portuguese? Or just flexing its muscles after its setbacks in the rest of Asia? No one could be sure, but the Reds were clearly not yet finished. Having won their first five demands, they were making five more demands at week's end, including the sacking of De Carvalho's police commissioner...