Cen Haohui, the only candidate born and raised in mainland China, recently became the new Chief Executive of Macau. Analysts believe this signifies Macau entering into a model of “Beijing-managed governance”.
At the age of 67, the former Chief Executive of Macau, Ho Iat Seng, announced on August 21 that he would not seek re-election due to health reasons. On August 28, Cen Haohui resigned from his position as the Chief Justice of Macau’s Final Appeal Court and announced his candidacy, becoming the Beijing government’s approved sole candidate.
In the Chief Executive election on October 13 in the Macau Special Administrative Region, out of the 398 members of the election committee composed of pro-Beijing individuals, 394 voted for Cen Haohui, with 4 ballots left blank. Local residents of Macau do not have the right to vote in this election.
Cen Haohui is set to be sworn in on December 20, the 25th anniversary of Macau’s sovereignty transfer, for a 5-year term until the end of 2029.
Different from his predecessors who had backgrounds in the local business sector, Cui Shian and Ho Iat Seng, Cen Haohui has a deep mainland China background.
Born in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, in 1959, Cen Haohui studied law at Peking University in the 1980s. He worked as a practicing lawyer in Guangzhou and was dispatched to Macau in 1986. In 1990, he went to the University of Coimbra in Portugal to study language and law, returning to Macau in 1993 to work in the judiciary and prosecution. In December 1999, during Macau’s sovereignty transfer, the 37-year-old Cen Haohui was appointed as the Chief Justice of Macau’s Final Appeal Court, a position he resigned from to run in the recent election.
Cen Haohui is considered one of the “Thirteen Taibao” cultivated by the Chinese Communist Party in Macau. The Thirteen Taibao refers to young cadres from mainland China sent to Macau in the 1990s to be groomed as future administrators. Alongside Cen Haohui, Huang Shaoze, the current Security Secretary of the Macau SAR, and Zhang Yongchun, the current Secretary for Administration and Justice of the Macau SAR, are also part of the Thirteen Taibao in Macau.
In 2021, when Macau police banned the “June 4th” candlelight vigil citing public health reasons, Cen Haohui as the Chief Justice ruled against the organizers, the Macau Democracy Development Union.
After becoming Chief Executive, Cen Haohui has explicitly stated his commitment to being accountable to the central government and the SAR, further integrating into China (the CCP)’s overall development plan.
Since the handover of sovereignty from Portugal in 1999, “One Country, Two Systems” has been the core governing principle in Macau, reflecting local autonomy and relative independence.
However, similar to the control exerted by the CCP in Hong Kong, “One Country, Two Systems” is merely a slogan without substance. Independent commentator Zhuge Mingyang told Epoch Times, “Although the previous two Chief Executives of Macau also obeyed the CCP, they were not as deeply rooted or loyal. So, having their own ‘cadres from the mainland’ in place gives the CCP peace of mind.”
The parents of Dr. Chung Kim-wah, a former Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Social Sciences at Polytechnic University, are Macanese. Many of his relatives still reside in Macau, and he has always been concerned about the situation in Macau.
He told the Epoch Times that the CCP has long been involved in managing Macau. “Since the December 3, 1966 incident (a large-scale opposition movement against the Portuguese government in Macau, resulting in at least 8 deaths and over 200 injured), it has been essentially a joint governance between China and Portugal. Therefore, the sovereignty handover negotiations in 1999 went smoothly. Many officials in Macau are pro-CCP, and the people of Macau are used to it. So, the appearance of a mainland Chinese as the Chief Executive of Macau is not surprising.”
According to Chung Kim-wah, young people in his family who are well-educated have mostly emigrated to other countries, while those who remain in Macau are mostly elderly. Macau provides good welfare for the elderly, leading to a lack of specific demands or concerns from them regarding who becomes the Chief Executive. The few young people who reside in Macau are mostly involved in the tourism and gambling industry, earning decent incomes and belonging to the upper-middle class in Macau, hence they do not possess the same sense of struggle for democracy and human rights as people in Hong Kong.
“The legislators advocating for democracy in Macau are a tiny minority, and with the recent constraints on freedom of speech by the Macau government, many people are refraining from speaking out, and there is hardly any fierce resistance. With the emergence of ‘Beijing-managed governance’ in Macau, will ‘Beijing-managed governance’ also appear in Hong Kong in the future? This possibility cannot be ruled out,” he stated.