Macau

John Lee, the Beijing-controlled chief executive of Hong Kong, announced on Tuesday that Hong Kong’s mandate to wear masks both inside and outdoors will be dropped on Wednesday, March 1. The mandate was imposed in July 2020, making it one of the world’s longest-lasting and strictest coronavirus mandates.

The government of Macau, which is the globe’s top gambling hub, locked down one of the city’s best-known hotels, the Grand Lisboa, on Tuesday after health officials detected over a dozen new Chinese coronavirus cases there, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

The government of Macau, a Chinese special administrative region and gambling hub, began shutting down most businesses and public spaces in the region on Sunday to contain a fresh outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The battle for democracy in Hong Kong has gotten most of the free world’s attention over the past few years, but Voice of America News (VOA) noted on Monday that China is quietly but inexorably tightening its grip on Macau as well. 

Chinese officials announced the total number of people infected by the Wuhan coronavirus now exceeds 20,000, with 427 fatalities reported worldwide. Officials reported 64 new deaths in China on Tuesday, making it the deadliest day of the epidemic so far.

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping delivered a New Year’s Day address on Tuesday in which he celebrated “significant breakthroughs” in technological development, economic growth, military power, and improved quality of life for China’s poor.

Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, who spent the week lavishing praise and attention on Macau to send a message to a certain other island that used to be a foreign colonial possession, used a speech commemorating 20 years of Chinese control over Macau to warn that Beijing will not accept interference by “external forces” in the Hong Kong crisis.

In the course of condemning Hong Kong protesters for ruining their city and urging them to be more like their cousins in semi-autonomous Macau, China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday borrowed a famous line from former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to denounce the Hong Kong democracy movement as a “basket of deplorables.” 

Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping called “the complete reunification of the motherland” – by which he meant the annexation of Taiwan and solidification of control over Hong Kong and Macau – “inevitable” and vowed to “unite all Chinese sons and daughters” on Tuesday.

China’s state media celebrated the “election” Sunday of pro-China politician Ho Iat Seng as the chief executive of Macau, despite Ho being the only candidate legally on the ballot and the voters being a committee of China loyalists tasked with choosing the city’s leaders.

China’s nightmare scenario is that Hong Kong’s huge protest movement could spread to other cities – especially Macau, which is only an hour away and also has semi-autonomous “Special Administrative Region” status.

China pressured American luxury clothing brand Coach, Italian designer Versace, and French fashion house Givenchy into apologizing on Monday for selling T-shirts that depicted Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan as countries separate from Communist China. 

The Chinese government on Monday unveiled its “Greater Bay Area” project to unite the semi-autonomous cities of Hong Kong and Macau with nine mainland cities into a tech and financial hub on par with Silicon Valley, its collective economy worth over $1.5 trillion.

Zheng Xiaosong, head of the Chinese liaison office in semi-autonomous Macau, fell to his death from his apartment building on Saturday. The Chinese government strongly implied he committed suicide because he “suffered from depression.”

The Wall Street Journal noted on Monday that several U.S. airlines appear to be resisting Beijing’s demand to change their websites to describe Taiwan as part of China. The Trump White House denounced such demands as “Orwellian nonsense” over the weekend.

The Marriott International hotel chain and Australia’s Qantas Airwaves have changed their website under pressure from the Chinese government to remove references to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Macau as separate “countries,” rather than regions of China.

China has evidently exceeded its tolerance for democracy along its fringes. There are reports this week that a Taiwanese pro-democracy activist mysteriously vanished during a visit to Macau, while the leaders of 2014’s democracy protests in Hong Kong have been politely arrested.

Contents: Malaysia expels North Korea’s ambassador Kang Chol; Malaysia accused of fronting North Korean weapons sales; Kim Han-sol, son of Kim Jong-nam, under guard to prevent North Korean assassination; New sanctions indicate China is running out of patience with Kim Jong-un

Shiwei Yan, founder of the Global Sustainability Foundation, entered a guilty plea on Wednesday to charges of funneling $800,000 in bribes to former United Nations General Assembly President John Ashe.

U.S. authorities have charged six people in connection with an alleged bribery scheme at the UN, including a former head of the General Assembly. The bribes were for real estate developments in Macau, a peninsula in mainland China.

Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau have each issued travel warnings for South Korea, where a deadly outbreak of the MERS virus is spreading rapidly.

The former Portuguese colony of Macau took in $45 billion in gambling revenues in 2013, up 20% from the prior year and nearly seven times the action on the Las Vegas strip. But in the last six months, China’s President Xi Jinping has devastated the “Monte Carlo of the Orient” as he accelerates his anti-corruption campaign against vast layers of entrenched officials. Xi hopes his purge will deflect blame away from the Communist Party as China suffers its worst economic crisis in two decades.

The arrest of a prominent Macau executive in the largest prostitution bust in the city’s history shows China’s President Xi Jinping is broadening his crackdown on corruption to restrict even long-tolerated vices.