King Man Eric 莊璟珉 Chong

Casino interests, Fujian tongxianghui and electoral politics in Macao.

ABSTRACT The study of hometown associations has been traditionally focused on their social and cultural activities, but little research has been conducted on their political and electoral participation. The direct elections held for the Legislative Assembly in September 2013 in the Macao Special Administrative Region were characterised by the emergence of a clear triangular relationship between casino interests, Fujianese tongxianghui (a hometown association or an interest group with members sharing the same locality ties) and electoral politics. The prominent victory of an electoral group led by the Fujianese tongxianghui and represented under the umbrella of the United Citizens Association of Macao (UCAM) was unprecedented in Macao’s political participation and historical development. As a community leader of the Fujian community, Chan Meng Kam formed the UCAM to perform multiple functions: protecting his casino interests, articulating the interests of the Fujianese and the society vis-à-vis the casino state, acting as an intermediary between the Macao government and ordinary citizens, especially in the northern district which is the power base of the UCAM, and serving as a united front machinery for a unique sub-ethnic interest group to win the hearts and minds of the people of Macao.

Key Contexts and Challenges

A quarter century ago, Benedict Anderson (1991) published what came to be a seminal book on understanding nationalism and nation states, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Anderson argued that nations were not primarily bounded territories but ‘imagined communities’, created in the mind and heart through the mediation of a number of institutions and processes including schools, public monuments and historical sites, and patriotic ceremonies. It is evident from the case studies in this book that the process of imagining and reimagining communities continues but is not necessarily limited to the context of nation states. China, it appears, is very focused on incorporating the people of Hong Kong and Macau (SARs), as well as their numerous ethnic minorities, into one national imagined community. The EU, on the other hand, is focused on imagining a ‘post-national’ community of communities.1 While the EU moves to a supranational understanding of citizenship, some in the UK imagine devolution of the federal nation state into smaller, more traditional entities. Consistent with Anderson’s original analysis, this reimagining is being fostered through formal schooling, other public institutions such as museums, galleries and historic sites, and cultural ceremonies and traditions.