Introducing Macau
Macau (also spelled “Macao”) is situated at the west of the Pearl River estuary in the southern tip of China, about an hour’s boat ride from Hong Kong. The Portuguese settled here in 1553, and since then Macau gradually became their colony until its return to China in 1999. Right now it has a population of over 650,000, about 93% of which are ethnic Chinese. Gambling is its main industry, and it provides the Macau government with 80% of its direct taxes. According to The World Bank, with a GDP per capita of USD80,892.8, Macau became the second richest territory in the world in 2017, trailing only Luxembourg. The gap between the rich and the poor, of course, is another story. As a Special Administrative Region of China and following a “one country, two systems” formula in its relationship to the mainland, Macau can be viewed as a semi-democracy but leaning toward authoritarianism. In general it is a plutocratic capitalist society (for more information, see Hao 2011, 2015a...
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Hao, Z. (2018). Higher Education Systems and Institutions, Macau. In: Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_580-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_580-1
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