Handover of Macau

Handover of Macau 澳門回歸 Transferência de Macau
Sino-Portuguese Lisbon Agreement, which was signed in 1887
Date(s)	20 December 1999; 24 years ago (1999-12-20)
Location(s)	Macau
Participants	China Portugal

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The handover of Macau from the Portuguese Republic to the People's Republic of China was at midnight on 20 December 1999. This event ended 442 years of Portuguese rule in the former settlement, which began in 1557.

Macau was settled by Portuguese merchants in 1557, during the Ming dynasty and was subsequently under various degrees of Portuguese rule until 1999. Portugal's involvement in the region was formally recognised by the Qing dynasty in 1749. The Portuguese governor João Maria Ferreira do Amaral, emboldened by the First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking, attempted to annex the territory, expelling Qing authorities in 1846, but was assassinated.^[1] After the Second Opium War, the Portuguese government, along with a British representative, signed the 1887 Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking that gave Portugal perpetual colonial rights to Macau on the condition that Portugal would cooperate in efforts to end the smuggling of opium.^[1]

After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and the transfer of China's seat to the People's Republic of China at the United Nations in 1971, then Foreign Minister Huang Hua appealed to the UN Special Committee on Decolonization to remove Macau (and Hong Kong) from its list of colonies, preferring bilateral negotiations ending in a return of the territory, rather than the independence of the territory as was implied by its inclusion on the list.

On 25 April 1974, a group of left-wing Portuguese officers organized a coup d'état in Lisbon, overthrowing the right-wing dictatorship that had controlled Portugal for 48 years. The new government began to transition Portugal to a democratic system and was committed to decolonization. The government carried out decolonization policies, and proposed Macau's handover to China in 1978.^[2] The Chinese government rejected this proposal, believing that an early handover of Macau would impact relations with Hong Kong.^{[2][page needed]}

On 31 December 1975, the Portuguese government withdrew its remaining troops from Macau. On 8 February 1979, the Portuguese government decided to break off diplomatic relations with the Republic of China, and established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China the next day. Both Portugal and the People's Republic of China recognized Macau as Chinese territory. The colony remained under Portuguese rule until 20 December 1999, when its handover to China took place and became the Macau Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. This marked the end of nearly 600 years of the European colonial era.