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Macau city of China is situated at the sea coast of southeastern
part of China to the west bank of the Pearl River Delta, surrounded by sea
from three sides, linking the Zhuhai Economic Special Zone in the north of
Guangdong Province, facing Hong Kong in the east with a distance of 40
nautical miles only an hour flight by hovercraft.
Macau (Macao) s of
Macau
Peninsula, Taipa and Coloane
islands. More than a hundred years ago, Macau showed clearly
Macau
Peninsula only, the area of
which in that time occupied only 2,78 square kilometers, and later on it
encompassed Taipa and Coloane islands. Over an hundred years of reclamation
of land by filling the sea, the area of Macau Peninsula has been increased
to 9.1 square kilometers, Taipa Island, 6.33 square kilometers, Coloane
Island, 8.07 square kilometers and the total area of Macau is 23.5 square
kilometers. The Macau
Peninsula is the political,
economic, transportation and cultural center of Macau. 94% of the
population and overwhelming majority of industrial and commercial
industries are concentrated on here.
Macau's total population
is 0.4546 million among which over 96% are Chinese, the rest are mainly
Portuguese in greater number. The language the Macau inhabitants use
daily is mainly Cantonese and the locally born Portuguese can speck fluent
Cantonese. The official languages currently in use are the Portuguese and
the Chinese languages. English language is also used on many occasions.
Macau belongs to the
monsoon climate of East Asian Subtropical Zone. The average annual
temperature is 22C,the hottest month of the year falls in July, the average
temperature is over 30C; the coldest month falls in January, the average
temperature of which is 14C, the lowest, only a few degrees. The average
annual relative humidity is 80%. Macau is typical of
foggy weather in Spring. Its rainfall is frequent from July to September.
The Macau economy has
entered into the highly open free market economic system, belonging to the
microeconomic system which has developed into a pluralized economic
infrastructure with processed products for exports, tourism and gambling
lottery, real estate construction and banking insurance as the four major
pillars.
Macau
China was the name given
by the Portuguese. In the mid16th century, with the expansion of "the
great discovery of navigation" by the European colonialists, the
Portuguese using "the drying of goods soaked in the water" as a
pretext, gained the right of abode on the already open-for-trade Macau
Peninsula through offering bribes to the officials of the Ming Dynasty and
rapidly expanded territory under their control, and step by step occupied
Macao, thus exercising colonialist control over Macau. None of previous
Chinese governments had ever recognized the illegal occupation of Macau by Portugual. In
1979, China and Portugual
established diplomatic relations and the Portuguese side affirmed that Macau was Chinese
territory under Portuguese administration. On 20 December 1999, after 400 years of great
changes from seas into mulberry fields and from mulberry fields into seas, China restored exercise
of sovereignty over Macau and thus Macau has a new returned
to the embrace of the motherland.
Macau has a long history
with a rich and varied culture. The Macau Government and people attach
great importance to the preservation and development of Macau culture imbued
with the feature of Sino-European cultures.
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