(W.E.Talk) Media professional Harald Brüning: Why do I choose Macao as my"first home"？
2024-12-19 Ecns.cn Editor：Xue Lingqiao
By Nie Zhixin, Han Chang
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Macao's return to motherland, Harald Brüning, a media professional who comes from Germany and has been living in Macao for nearly 40 years, was recently interviewed by China News Service's West-East Talk. From the perspective of Macao's permanent foreign residents who experienced the return of Macao, he shares the story of Macao's rapid development over the past 25 years, and talks about the convenience of foreign residents' life in Macao and Zhuhai, as well as the potential of Macao as a hub where East meets West.
Here are the excerpts of the interview:
CNS: You have been living in Macao for nearly 40 years since you left Germany. Why did you choose to settle in Macao?
Harald Brüning: I have lived and worked in Macao since 1985, and the city quickly became my "home from home"– some 9,000 km from my home town, Helmstedt, in Lower Saxony, northern Germany. I never thought that Macao would become my second home, well, nowadays it is actually my first home, my home of choice.
I studied Spanish and Portuguese at university in Munich as my second major – alongside political science – so my knowledge of the Portuguese language was, of course, one of the reasons that I fell "in love" with Macao's Chinese-Portuguese multicultural environment.
After coming to Macao, as a news correspondent, I worked for United Press International (UPI), Hong Kong media, as well as other local media in Macao. For the past 20 years, I have been the director and chief editor of an English-language newspaper in Macao. Anyhow, I am now 71 years old, which means that I have spent over 50 percent of my life so far in Macao.
CNS: On the occasion of Macao's return to the motherland in 1999, how did you, as a member of the media, participate in and witness this moment? How would you describe the changes that have taken place in Macao from your arrival in the early 1980s, to Macao’s return, to Macao today?
Harald Brüning: The fact that I was able to report Macao's return to the motherland for various media organisations in December 1999 continues to be THE highlight of my work as a journalist.
The historic night from December 19 to December 20, 1999, was an unforgettable experience. I wrote articles that night about the "handover" for the South China Morning Post and Reuters, assisted international media colleagues such as from CNN in covering the event, and also was interviewed by some visiting journalists about "what was going on". That night, naturally, I did NOT sleep at all.
The "day after", i.e., December 20, 1999 was kind of a contrast – apparently, “everything” had changed but also "nothing" seemed to have changed. My feeling was that the change in administration was, of course, a fundamental one but that, at the same time, it was so smoothly carried out that one hardly, to a certain degree, could feel it. I remember, for instance, that our police officers still wore the same uniforms but had new lapels attached to them, and the Portuguese flags and symbols on the street had quickly been replaced by Chinese ones.
Both Beijing and Lisbon deserve praise for having been able to achieve this, generally speaking, seamless transition period. I also should underline that the overwhelming majority of Macao's residents were looking forward to the moment.
Interestingly enough, December 20, 1999 "only" occurred a quarter of a century ago, but, for my personally, it feels like it happened a very long time ago. The reason why I have this "time illusion" is that the rapid development achievements of Macao over the past 25 years would have taken a much longer time span to achieve.
Since 1999, the population, land area, foreign trade and the number of hotel rooms have all experienced significant growth. Macao's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has achieved an astonishing six-fold growth, and with per capita GDP increasing by over 3-fold. The MSAR has grown into one of the world's most wealthy economies, its financial reservices are enormous, standing at around 600 billion patacas (US$75 billion), and all that without any public debt! That's certainly a very special situation in the whole world.
All this explains, to a certain degree, why Macao is a special administrative region of the PRC – a very special one indeed.
When I moved to Macao in 1985, the city was condescendingly known as Hong Kong's "poor cousin". Well, now it is Hong Kong's "rich cousin".
CNS: Regarding your experience in Macao, in what ways can you say that you have benefited from the development of Macao during the 25 years since the return, and from such a multicultural society?
Harald Brüning: After the return of Macao, the development of the tourism industry, the influx of foreign tourists, and the dearth (relatively speaking) of reliable news prompted my team and I to decide to launch an English-language daily two decades ago. My impression is that there has been more news coverage of Macao, both nationally and internationally, in the past few years, also because of the setting-up of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the In-depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin. Macao is increasingly in the spotlight.
In order to achieve the goal of establishing a World Leisure and Tourism Centre, the local government needs to increase its information drive in English in particular, the most common language in the world. Even though English does not have official status in Macao (unlike Chinese and Portuguese), it is Macao's de facto lingua franca.
Working as a journalist – reporter, editor and publisher – in a multicultural and multilingual (Cantonese, Mandarin, Portuguese, English) environment is no mean feat. Macao's multiculturalism makes our work as journalists particularly interesting. It is, actually, a great challenge. But I do love challenges, without which journalism would be rather boring.
CNS: As a member of Macao's permanent foreign residents, how do you see the link between this group and the Macao society？
Harald Brüning: As far as I know, about 20,000 permanent foreign residents live in Macao, i.e., about 3.0 percent of the population, comprising dozens of different nationalities, such as Portuguese, Filipinos, Americans, French, Malaysians. Most of them are professionals and their families. Many work in the academia such as at Macao's universities, others work as professionals and experts for the government, banks, the airport, in the medical sector and in the areas of culture and the arts. Others are teachers at local schools.
Most foreign residents are quite satisfied, even happy, with their situation here, and many of them are also well integrated into local society and Macao has become their home from home, or second home.
The MSAR Government and the Central People's Government have been treating foreign nationals in Macao very well since 1999. Macao's foreign residents have also made important contributions to Macao's development drive over the past 25 years, not just in economic and financial but also in societal and cultural terms. "Loving Macao" is a fait accompli also for Macao's foreign citizens, alongside their local counterparts.
Most, I am sure, regard Macao as a pleasantly livable and very convenient place – perhaps with the exception of traffic and public transport, but that's a merely technical problem that the local authorities should be able to solve before long. Convenience is one of Macao's highlight – virtually everything is conveniently near and the government's ongoing digitalization drive is making it increasingly convenient for residents to deal with public administration, public health and other public matters. As a foreign resident of Macao, I do feel at home here.
CNS: According to your observation, what convenience in working and living have been brought to the people of Macao, by the Cooperation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) and the Guangdong-Macao in-depth cooperation zone in Hengqin, and how have they promoted Macao's moderate and diversified economic development?
Harald Brüning: Macao's future depends on its successful integration into the Greater Bay Area, which includes the Guangdong-Macao In-depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin. It’s the only way to advance Macao’s ongoing efforts to achieve the appropriate diversification of its economy which still does excessively depend on its gaming industry, which, I would like to point out, has been an important part of Macao’s economy since the 19th century. The integration and diversification processes, which go hand in hand, need time to bear fruit and, therefore, should be seen as medium-term undertakings.
A few months ago, I visited the Macao New Neighbourhood (MNN) in Hengqin, a comprehensive project that integrates quality living space, education, health and social services for the residents of Macao. I was impressed by its construction and design quality. If I were younger, I would buy a flat there.
Since the Central People's Government gave us permanent foreign residents in Macao in July this year the welcome "present" of mainland travel permits, I have paid several visits to Zhuhai where I have been impressed by the adjacent city's extraordinary development progress over the past few decades, such as its great malls, modern residential buildings and efficient public transport facilities.
Besides, the mainland authorities have recently allowed Zhuhai residents to visit Macao once a week – which we can expect to benefit Macao's retail sector. Macao residents nowadays tend to pay frequent visits to Zhuhai for shopping, relaxation and eating-out , and we can expect the same from Zhuhai residents frequently visiting Macao for the same purposes.
CNS: Having been in Macao for decades, what are your feelings about the characteristics of Macao's "blending of East and West"? What do you think Macao can do to promote the exchanges and mutual understanding between Eastern and Western civilizations?
Harald Brüning: Of course, the fact that Macao is a "special" region in China is primarily due to its "special" history and its multiculturalism consisting of Eastern and Western (Occidental and Oriental) cultural, culinary, architectural, judicial, societal and other aspects.
Macao is the only city in China with a southern European touch. This is, no doubt, special, even unique. But Macao is also a very Chinese society. Chinese culture is the mainstay of its society. Chinese customs and traditions are actively observed by Macao's ethnic Chinese residents, who account for well over 90 percent of its population.
Macao should continue to play its historic role as a platform for relations between the Occident and the Orient, between China and the world's nine Portuguese-speaking countries with a combined population of about 270 million and the European Union's 450 million inhabitants, but also Southeast Asia, considering that probably around one-sixth of Macao's population consists of overseas Chinese immigrants and their locally born offspring from various Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and elsewhere.
Macao can also play a special role in promoting scientific exchanges between China and the rest of the world, such as by attracting highly qualified researchers, inventors and innovators to work and settle here.
Particularly since 2013, Macao has benefitted from the Central People's Government's pro-active measures to support Macao's future development as a World Centre of Tourism and Leisure, as well as a hub for innovation, research (such as in the area of traditional Chinese medicine/TCM), startups, financial services, big health, and high tech.
My expectation is that Macao's modernization process will continue to go on well in the coming decades and that the MSAR will increasingly integrate itself into the GBA. I also expect Macao to maintain its special identity as an East-meets-West hub concurrently with its ongoing integration in the GBA and China as a whole.
As a long-time resident, I have full confidence in the future of the MSAR. While I do not have any immediate plans to retire, even if I retire one day I would live out my last years in Macao.
About the interviewee:
Harald Brüning, born in Germany in 1953, graduated from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich with a Master's Degree in Political Science and also holds a Master's Degree in Political Science (M.I.P.A.) from the University of Hong Kong. He passed the state examination for certified translators (German-Spanish) in Germany and is also fluent in English and Portuguese.
He has lived and worked in Hong Kong and Macao since the 1980s, and has worked for news organisations such as Hong Kong Standard, South China Morning Post, Reuters, United Press International (UPI), and Portugal's national news agency LUSA, and has been involved in reporting on the Macao's return to China, etc. In 2004, he co-founded The Macau Post Daily, the oldest English-language local newspaper in Macao, and has been the director of the newspaper ever since.
He is focusing on topics such as China's diplomacy, Sino-European economy and trade, Greater Bay Area cooperation, and Macao's development.
