Ghosts of war: China’s relations with Portugal in the post-war period, 1945–9*

This article investigates the ways in which the legacies of the Second World War shaped Sino-Portuguese relations during the final years of Nationalist rule in mainland China. It argues that Portugal’s wartime neutrality exacerbated the ambiguities of its centuries-old presence in China and that these ambiguities were decisive in shaping political and diplomatic manoeuvring in the post-war period. As a victorious power China sought to affirm its sovereignty when dealing with Portugal on issues such as the handling of Japanese property, the extradition of suspects of war crimes and collaboration, and the abolition of extraterritoriality. Disagreements over these reflected both countries’ attempts to assert sovereignty through the ability to serve justice. This article investigates the ways in which the legacies of the Second World War shaped Sino-Portuguese relations during the final years of Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, K.M.T.) rule in mainland China. While there has been a vibrant historiographical interest in the conflict in East Asia and its immediate aftermath, 1 studies on the international history of the war and the post-war period in the region have largely centred on the role of the major belligerents (the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, China, Britain and, to a lesser extent, France, Germany and Italy). 2 However, as comparative studies

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of decolonization have demonstrated, 3 considering small colonial powers can reveal important overlooked connections and reframe our understanding of the practices and limitations of larger players.Building on recent scholarship that has reassessed the importance of Nationalist China in post-war international politics 4 and the fates of imperialism in East Asia, this article analyses the opportunities and difficulties that arose in China's diplomacy with Portugal in the late 1940s.Portugal's wartime neutrality exacerbated the ambiguities of its old presence in China.Those ambiguities provided considerable room for political and diplomatic manoeuvring in the immediate post-war period, as both the Chinese Nationalists and the Portuguese Estado Novo regime sought to assert sovereignty in a new, uncertain world order.
Ruled by an authoritarian government since the late 1920s, Portugal was one of the few European countries to remain neutral during the Second World War.That neutrality was far from straightforward.There were periods of greater proximity to the Axis -with whom the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar had a number of affinitiesfollowed by a pro-Allied shift in 1943, framed in the context of the country's historical alliance with Great Britain.This late pro-Allied move greatly contributed to the survival of Salazar's regime.Unlike the defeated fascist regimes in Europe, but similar to Spain, Portugal's Estado Novo was allowed to remain as a most undemocratic part of the 'West', as well as the only colonial power not to experience a significant wave of decolonization in the post-war period.The ambiguities of Portugal's neutrality in the Euro-American context of the war have been meticulously probed by historians, 5 but its iterations in East Asia remain comparatively understudied.
In fact, Portugal's neutrality had important effects in China. 6The southern enclave of Macau, a Portuguese settlement since the sixteenth century, remained the only foreignruled territory in China not to be occupied by Japan.Portuguese sovereignty there had never been unequivocally accepted by successive Chinese regimes, and the extent of Portugal's ability to shape everyday life in the enclave had varied substantially over time.The ambiguities of the Portuguese presence in China, including what Cathryn Clayton calls 'sort-of sovereignties' in her seminal study on Macau,7 were significantly exacerbated in the 1930s and 1940s.Portugal never broke off relations with China's ruling Nationalist government, whose leader, Chiang Kai-shek, led the country's resistance against Japan. 8nlike most other non-Axis countries, Portugal did not relocate its diplomats to the Chinese wartime capital of Chongqing in the south-western hinterland.When Japan 3 See, e.g., The Ends of European Colonial Empires: Cases and Comparisons, ed.M. B. Jerónimo and A. C. Pinto (Basingstoke, 2015). 4See, e.g., R. Mitter, 'State-building after disaster: Jiang Tingfu and the reconstruction of post-World War II China, 1943-1949 occupied most urban centres in coastal China in 1937-8, all of Portugal's consuls and its highest-ranking diplomat remained in occupied cities.The Portuguese minister to China stayed in Shanghai, where he mingled in Axis circles and interacted with Chinese collaborationist authorities.In Macau, surrounded by occupied lands and seas from 1938-40, engagement with Japanese military and diplomatic figures and representatives of the Reorganized National Government (R.N.G.) was a frequent necessity.The R.N.G., established in 1940 by a prominent Nationalist politician and long-time Chiang rival, Wang Jingwei, was the most important collaborationist government in wartime China and, among other areas, controlled part of Guangdong province, which bordered Macau.Described by Philip Snow as an 'East Asian Casablanca', 9 Macau was a centre of shadow diplomacy, intelligence gathering and smuggling.Its neutrality was useful to all belligerents in the region. 10It was also a haven to thousands of refugees fleeing the Japanese occupation in China and, from 1942 onwards, those leaving occupied Hong Kong.During the war the number of people in Macau -a territory comprising a peninsula and two islands with a combined area of around 15 km 2 -rose almost threefold, reaching half a million. 11The massive influx of refugees was central to Portuguese arguments against accusations of collaboration with Japan and the R.N.G. that arose during and after the war.Concessions made to their demands (for example, for vessels or materials) were justified with the need to ensure food supplies.
Existing publications in Chinese, English and Portuguese tend to centre on the local impact of the conflict on Macau's society and economy. 12When foreign relations are considered, it is engagements with Japan that are emphasized and little is said on Sino-Portuguese relations during the conflict, though arguably this was the most important bilateral relationship concerning Macau.The post-war period has been analysed mostly as a prelude to in-depth studies on (unofficial) relations between Mao's China and Portugal. 13his article aims to shed new light on the complex post-war diplomacy between the Republic of China (R.O.C.) and Portugal and the ways in which the Nationalists sought to reassert Chinese sovereignty over Macau.The (ab)uses of neutrality during the war were central to post-war Sino-Portuguese relations.This work explores a series of issues left by the conflict: the re-establishment of regular diplomatic contacts, the handling of Japanese property, the extradition of suspects of war crimes and collaboration, the abolition of extraterritoriality, and discourses criticizing Portugal's problematic neutrality in calls to retake Macau.These interconnected issues raised complicated sets of questions about the meaning of justice and who got to wield it that had increased significance for both Nationalist China and Portugal's Estado Novo in a period of great change.The Allied victory in the Second World War saw China recognized as an important postwar power.This new international status is perhaps best illustrated by Nationalist China's role in the United Nations.Not only was China a founding member, it was also one of the few to hold a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.In contrast, Portugal was permitted to join the U.N. only in 1955 and remained a 'rogue state' in subsequent decades due to its rulers' position against decolonization. 14In their relations with Portugal, the Nationalist authorities sought to affirm China's post-war position as a fully sovereign nation.Portuguese attempts to counter this by acting the sovereign in Macau provide new insight on the limits to decolonization in South China in the late 1940s.While some attempts were made to overcome disagreements and forge smoother Sino-Portuguese relations, often through elite personal connections, most wartime issues -with the exception of extraterritoriality -were left unsolved as the Chinese Civil War unfolded.
Based on multilingual archival sources from Europe and East Asia, including untapped records from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (M.O.F.A.) held in Taiwan and from the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lisbon, this article aims to make an important contribution to the ongoing historiographical reappraisal of China's global connections during the war and the early post-war period, as well as to the understudied theme of Nationalist China's diplomatic relations with smaller powers.
If colonial possessions were deemed vital for Portugal's Estado Novo elites, antiimperialism was a critical aspect of the Nationalist state-building project.Since it had come to power in the wake of the Northern Expedition (1926-8), the K.M.T. had been intent on restoring Chinese sovereignty over parts of the country under foreign rule, achieving some successes before the war with Japan (such as the retrocession of the British-leased territory of Weihaiwei in 1930).In the post-war period, with the highest international status it had enjoyed since the Opium War, the Chinese government sought to affirm its position as a fully sovereign, postcolonial nation, both at home and abroad.If the Japanese occupation and its defeat had ousted foreign rule throughout China, this did not occur in Hong Kong and Macau, governed by European powers that rejected the view that the Second World War had been a global war against imperialism.In the case of Macau, its characteristic ambiguities had been heightened by wartime neutrality.This greatly complicated China's assertions of its postcolonial vision, as it clashed with the Portuguese insistence on maintaining the colonial status quo as if the war, and China's victory in it, meant little.

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The sudden end to the war with Japan's surrender, announced on 15 August 1945 and formally signed on 2 September, caught Portuguese representatives in Shanghai and Macau in a whirlwind of changes that they, like many other foreigners, were often unable to comprehend.After years without a senior diplomat in the Nationalists' capital, Portugal took steps to resume official contacts in China.Initially, the significance of the Allies' success seems to have escaped the Portuguese minister in Shanghai, João Maria da Silva de Lebre e Lima, who had taken up his post in 1938 and remained in the occupied city throughout the conflict.He declined an invitation from the French consul to celebrate the Allied victory, arguing that since Portugal was neutral and kept a diplomatic representation in Japan, 'to celebrate the victory of one power could be interpreted as rejoicing in the defeat of another'. 15The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lisbon, at the time led by Salazar,16 emphasized that Lima was authorized to participate in celebrations of victory, in which the government was 'directly interested'. 17But the unease was evident.A few weeks later Lima informed Lisbon of his wish to leave for the United States at the earliest opportunity due to his wife's health. 18To replace him, the ministry sent José Rodrigues Simões Affra as chargé d'affaires to Chongqing.There he was told that the Chinese government considered Lima's presence in China undesirable and hoped for his replacement.This was because he 'had always refused to reside' in Chongqing, 'alleging difficulties of relocation that all other colleagues had managed to overcome'. 19Complaints about Lima had been made several times.A few months before, on a visit to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lisbon, the first secretary of the Chinese legation had enquired about the delay in sending a chargé d'affaires to Chongqing; months after being nominated, the official had not yet made the trip, citing health reasons.He noted disapprovingly that during the war the Portuguese minister to China had stayed in Shanghai with no contact with the Chinese government.He had remained in occupied territory, generating 'a confused and "regrettable" diplomatic situation' that ought to be clarified with the end of hostilities. 20owever, proximity to the base of the Nationalist government was no guarantee of a better understanding.Affra spent six months in Chongqing from October 1945 and wrote a detailed report about the experience.Revealing his poor adaptation to life in the wartime capital and an incredible dearth of empathy for what the city had gone through, 21 Affra concentrated on the failings of the Nationalists and what he saw -in typical colonial parlance -as the ordeal of the 'foreigners born in civilized countries'. 22e lived in a hotel owned by the vice premier, H. H. Kung (Kong Xiangxi), Chialing House (Jialing binguan), where many foreign diplomats resided.Although other accounts describe it as a space of relative luxury amid the privations of the wartime capital, 23 Affra decried its supposedly appalling conditions, for which he blamed the Chinese government.The lack of privilege he was experiencing was doubly disconcerting: China was no longer treating all foreigners as superior to the Chinese, and Portugal's diplomatic presence in China was insignificant, as it was the only country to have sent just one representative to Chongqing (Affra was even called the 'one-man legation'). 24He moved to Shanghai in 1946 and then to Nanjing, but his description of the latter was also extremely critical. 25Only in 1947 did Portugal send a minister plenipotentiary to China again, although his opinion of the Nationalists, as will be mentioned later, was probably worse than Affra's. 26n contrast, the Portuguese authorities in Macau were relatively quick to adapt to victory and to seek closer relations with the Nationalists, despite the difficulties springing from the volatile conditions in South China.In early September 1945 the situation around Macau reflected the confusion experienced in many other places when the war in Asia reached an abrupt end.The governor of Macau, Gabriel Maurício Teixeira, reported to Lisbon that some areas were occupied by Chongqing forces, others were still occupied by the Japanese and still others were dominated by Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) guerrillas, none of whom advanced on Macau, where the Chinese community filled the streets commemorating peace.The Portuguese authorities joined in with the festivities. 27n a public speech the governor said 'long live' (viva) China and Chiang Kai-shek. 28epresentatives of the Chinese community in Macau, including the presidents of the Commercial Association, the Kiang Wu Hospital, the Tung Sin Tong Charitable Society and the Chinese Educational Association -key relief organizations during the war years -thanked the Portuguese authorities for the 'benefits received' under Portuguese neutrality. 29Two visions of sovereignty with rather opposing views towards colonialism coexisted in such celebrations: one marked China's victory in a war against imperialism; the other emphasized the shielding effects of a neutrality derived from colonial rule.This contradictory overlap was fragile and easily contested.Indeed, public celebrations of peace did not last for long.A few days later a Portuguese soldier disobeyed the prohibition on crossing the Barrier Gate -which marked the land border with Guangdong province -and was caught by a group of Chinese collaborators and held for exchange by some of their members.The governor appealed to the Chinese authorities, whose regular army forces were increasing in the vicinity, suggesting both impotence to deal with the matter and a desire to foster a constructive relationship with the Nationalists.However, the latter's position was also far from stable, especially in a complex frontier area where the plurality of actors who had engaged in wartime resistance or collaboration (or both) was not always easy to disentangle.According to Teixeira, the Chinese government's forces were clashing with Communist guerrillas while some islands near Macau continued to be under the control of 'pirates' and pro-Japanese Chinese forces. 30The governor recommended that Chongqing appoint a trusted delegate to Macau because he had no way of knowing with whom to discuss matters given that many people came to him saying they were Nationalist officials. 31Such confusion would mark the post-war years to a significant extent, though this was due not merely to domestic fractures within China but also to those among the Portuguese.
Nationalist military figures engaged in liberating Guangdong province from the Japanese saw a good opportunity to include Macau in their operations and prepared to oust the Portuguese by force.Liu Shaowu, who commanded a division under General Zhang Fakui,32 blockaded Macau between November and December, controlling water and land transport and preventing food and energy supplies from entering the enclave.Liu believed that he was strengthening the government's negotiating hand, but the minister of foreign affairs, Wang Shijie, considered that the time was not yet right to recover Macau.Chiang's government asked Zhang Fakui to order Liu to end the blockade. 33he latter was lifted but only when Portugal accepted to undertake measures to extradite suspects of war crimes, hand over Japanese property and allow the nomination of a M.O.F.A. special commissioner to Macau. 34he retreat of Liu Shaowu ended K.M.T. attempts to retake the enclave by force, but the unfinished business of Macau's decolonization not only remained a matter of public discussion in China but was also occasionally brought to foreign audiences.For example, in August 1946 a newsletter of the Chinese Ministry of Information in London, China Newsweek, published an article by a professor of economics at the National Central University in Nanjing advocating Macau's 'return to the motherland in order to clear away the last vestige of the unequal treaties'.One of the reasons given to support this was that Macau had 'served as a perfect refuge for fugitives, gangsters and criminals'. 35he Portuguese authorities did not regard Chinese Nationalist aspirations towards Macau as legitimate, just as they would be unable to engage constructively with other forms of anti-imperialist nationalism elsewhere in the following decades.Nevertheless, some Portuguese policymakers did see these comparatively.In an illustrative example, Charles Stirling, a counsellor at the British embassy in Lisbon, noted how the director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had told him in conversation that 'the attitude of the Chinese towards Macau was much the same as that of the Indian nationalists towards Goa'. 36Portuguese diplomats in China were unimpressed by the Nationalists' new international position and saw Portugal's inflexibility as evidence of the country's exceptionalism.In 1946 the consul at Guangzhou, Amaro Sacramento Monteiro, speculated that this was due 'to the susceptibility originating from the fact that a small power maintains a colony in Chinese territory when the great ones make concessions and court their good will' together with a heighted nationalism fuelled by 'the Americans' attitude who convinced them they also won the war'. 37He further expressed disregard for China's contribution to the war -which is now recognized as significant to the Allied victory 38 -in another despatch, in which he referred to the Chinese people as 'drunk with a victory for which they contributed little'. 39In a fourteen-page-long despatch to Lisbon, Affra, the chargé d'affaires then based in Shanghai, also expressed his very negative view of the Nationalists stating that the K.M.T. was 'discredited' and its administration was 'inefficient and supremely dishonest'. 40He was particularly revolted when Lieutenant General Takashi Sakai, former commander of the Imperial Japanese Army in South China, was publicly executed in Nanjing. 41In bluntly racist language Affra referred to this event as defining of 'this sordid and barbaric people, in which a pseudo-millenarian civilisation had not managed to infuse a single attribute of moral decency'. 42Anger at and dismissal of Nationalist China's post-war actions can be read as unsurprising giving the obstinacy of the Estado Novo elites' colonialist worldview.At least for some, an independent Asian nation serving justice against a formal imperial occupier appears to have been difficult to process.
Contempt for China's post-war position as a major power in the international stage was also expressed a few years later by the Portuguese minister to China, João de Barros Ferreira da Fonseca, who did not hide a certain sympathy for defeated Japan, a country with which Portugal had maintained ambiguously close relations during the war and that was regarded quite favourably by some -but by no means all -Portuguese officials. 43He believed that China's new status had made Sino-Portuguese relations difficult because of the 'natural arrogance' of a country emerging victorious 'over the progressive Japanese empire', although he did admit that the anomalous wartime circumstances when Portugal 'lost contact with the central government' were also to blame. 44In an unintendedly ironic statement -for Portugal itself was ruled by an authoritarian regime -Fonseca described the K.M.T. as 'a form of national dictatorship, supported on a single party … that everyone knows has as little of "democratic" as of "national" or "serious"'. 45Another despatch followed a similar logic, stating that some said that Chiang Kai-shek's government 'is little different from a modality of fascism, which the war had destined to be removed', a regime 'where individual freedoms and non-official expressions of thought are severely suppressed'. 46Once again, this observation could also be applicable to the Estado Novo dictatorship.While one should be cautious about reading these discriminatory remarks as the sole perspective on the Nationalists circulating in Portuguese diplomatic circles, 47 they do expose the anxieties of a small European colonial power unable to come to terms with China's post-war status and an increasingly anti-colonial post-war order.They also suggest a certain disjuncture between diplomats in mainland China and the authorities in Macau.The latter's de facto dependency on Chinese goodwill no doubt informed their more accommodating position.

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China promptly embraced its role as a victorious nation but this postcolonial reality found colonial powers like Portugal disinclined to accept its sovereignty in the 40 A.H.D., 2P, A47, M151, Affra to M.N.E., 22   47 These negative views contrast with more positive accounts written by diplomats who had witnessed Japanese wartime atrocities, such as the reports penned by the Portuguese consul in Guangzhou at the start of the war (A Guerra vista de Cantão: Os relatórios de Vasco Martins Morgado, Cônsul-Geral de Portugal em Cantão, sobre a Guerra Sino-Japonesa [The War Seen From Canton: the Reports of Vasco Martins Morgado, Portugal's Consul General in Canton, About the Sino-Japanese War], ed. A. V. Saldanha [Macau, 1998] legal adjudication of problems left by the war.Of central concern to the Chinese representatives was the management of alleged war criminals and their property.Writing to M.O.F.A., the Chinese minister in Lisbon, Zhang Qian, noted that the news of Japan's surrender was received with joy by the people of Portugal.The Portuguese government had informed him that it would recover Timor -which had been under Japanese occupation since 1942 -and the situation of Macau, which had been through difficult times, could be discussed later.Zhang understood Portugal was still harbouring colonial designs. 48The Chinese legation in Lisbon sent a note to the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs requesting that Portugal follow the same provisions it had applied to German assets to 'all public and private Japanese assets in Portugal and Portuguese territory as well as to the assets owned or controlled from all territories occupied by Japan and Japanese satellites'. 49It would soon become apparent that it was easier for the Nationalists to be treated as a fully sovereign power abroad than in Macau, where their efforts to deal with wartime issues clashed with Portuguese moves to affirm its rule and protect the reputation of its administration.Unlike Portugal, Macau represented two things the Nationalists wanted to overcome in the post-war period: a Chinese territory controlled by a foreign power and a territory that had been subjected to a significant level of Japanese control. In Portugal disposal of Japanese property was co-ordinated between China, Britain and the U.S.A., an instance of relatively smooth international co-operation between the wartime allies.According to a report written in April 1947 by the American, British and Chinese members of a quadripartite committee for Japanese affairs (a representative of the U.S.S.R. was absent because Portugal had no diplomatic relations with Moscow) to the chiefs of diplomatic missions of those countries, 'plans for taking in custody the official Japanese property in Portugal were made in August 1945'. 50The following month guards from the U.S. army were posted in the Japanese minister's residence, the chancery, the military attaché's and the naval attaché's offices.The latter contained 'only office furniture and items without [any] particular value or confidential character, other items having been either destroyed or consolidated in the Legation'.Analysis of the documents in the Japanese legation revealed 'nothing of any interest whatsoever'.After being questioned on this, the Japanese minister informed that 'everything of a confidential nature had been destroyed, on instructions, "immediately after the Potsdam declaration"'. 51This matches communications intercepted in 1945 revealing that the Japanese legation in Lisbon destroyed telegrams and account books after the German surrender. 52f Japanese assets in Portugal were negligible, in Macau they were considerable and a joint action was harder to co-ordinate.Power sharing with the other key Allied power represented in the territory, Great Britain, was not a priority for the Chinese government, then reeling from Britain's speedy reoccupation of Hong Kong in plain disregard for their wartime alliance.In September 1945 the Chinese legation in Lisbon wrote to the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerning Japanese assets of 'considerable amount and quantity' accumulated in Macau.It proposed that a 'thorough investigation and inspection of these assets be conducted jointly by the representatives of the Chinese and Portuguese Government[s]'. 53The M.O.F.A. special commissioner appointed to Macau in 1945, Tang Liu, proceeded to transfer some of those assets to China, which motivated the British to try to guarantee that enemy property was dealt with in Macau as in any neutral territory.In September the British ambassador in Chongqing, Horace Seymour, wrote to the vice minister for foreign affairs, Gan Naiguang, to ascertain if the British consul at Macau could be associated with the investigations of Japanese assets in Macau. 54Repeated correspondence on this topic over the following year shows that the Nationalists regarded Japanese assets in Macau quite differently from those in Lisbon because the former was considered Chinese territory.British proposals for holding Japanese funds in a joint account, 55 or leaving Japanese property under Portugal's control, 56 proved unattractive to the Chinese government.
Taking over Japanese property was regarded by the Chinese government as a reasonable request to face the massive destruction caused by Japan in eight years of war.But the processes of dealing with Japanese assets were not always smooth.In London the Chinese ambassador, Wellington Koo (Gu Weijun), sent a memorandum to the foreign office in 1945 on China's desiderata relating to Japanese reparations.It proposed that the 'full title of property rights, interests and assets of whatever nature belonging to the Japanese Empire and Japanese nationals in the territory of the Chinese Republic … be considered as having passed to the Chinese Government'. 57But the British were cautious in their reply, underplaying the devastation China had experienced.The head of the Foreign Office Far Eastern Department, J. C. Sterndale Bennett, wrote to the treasury that while China 'has suffered much from looting, pillage and destruction by the Japanese armed forces', it had 'suffered nothing like the bomb damage which we in Britain have suffered' and destruction in the British colonies had to be considered.For the British it was important to clarify whether assets were Japanese or seized from British owners. 58The existence of places where both the Chinese and the British had competing claims on Japanese property complicated matters.Macau had long been claimed as part of China but it had also been a territory within the British sphere of influence during the war, and these ambiguities complicated the assertion of Chinese sovereignty there in the post-war period.In May 1946 the British embassy in Chongqing enquired on the veracity of a report received from the consul at Macau that a sum in Chinese national dollars in notes, property of the local branch of the Yokohama Specie Bank, had been sent by the M.O.F.A. special commissioner in the enclave to the Bank of China in Guangzhou.If confirmed, the British requested the funds be returned as they had been assured that 'no unilateral decision would be taken regarding the disposal of Japanese assets in Macao'. 59The M.O.F.A. confirmed that the notes would be 'deposited in a special account and not touched pending discussions between the governments concerned regarding their disposition'. 60It is likely that the records of the Japanese consulate in Macau were also taken to China in this period. 61part from material remains, another trace of Japan's presence in Macau also merited international attention: several Japanese subjects residing in the enclave.Their case shows how a neutral territory was part of the extensive repatriation drive at the end of the Japanese empire, a process itself marked by complex ambiguities. 62By the end of the war there were more than fifty Japanese citizens residing in Macau eligible for repatriation.Lists compiled in January 1946 listed forty men, eight women and five children wanting to leave.Some expressed the desire to be repatriated at a later date, either to accompany family members (two women whose husbands were detained in Macau and Guangzhou)  or to be able to liquidate their frozen businesses. 63Three Japanese subjects wanted to be repatriated to Formosa, which suggests that they were in fact Taiwanese people with Japanese citizenship.Other Japanese citizens were not registered at the consulate, and the Americans believed some ten to fifteen might be hiding in Macau.Some were deemed of potential intelligence interest also to the British authorities in Hong Kong, who wanted to take them in to be interrogated there.This was the case of the vice consul, Asahina Taiki, who was believed to be a Kempeitai captain. 64The Chinese General Headquarters of the National Military Council in Guangzhou were also interested in Japanese men in Macau, notably Fukasako Tomio, ex-manager of the Nan Xing Tobacco Company in Macau, which was described as 'the property of the ex-Puppet-Governor of Korea'. 65There were some attempts at joint action in the South China region.For example, General Zhang Fakui asked for the co-operation of the governor of Hong Kong to have the wanted men arrested and sent to Guangzhou for trial.But competing national interests and jurisdictions, as well as complex identity matters, marred extradition procedures.* Disagreements over Japanese property and extradition of alleged war criminals and collaborators were not only driven by Chinese grievances connected to what had happened during the war but were very much linked to the idea that the ability to serve justice was a marker of a sovereign state.In the uncharted terrain of a postcolonial and post-war new order, Portuguese officials made the most of the control they still retained over Macau, meeting Chinese attempts to seek justice for wartime misdeeds with their own sets of conditions.To the Portuguese authorities, handing alleged Chinese traitors (hanjian) to the Nationalists was even more problematic than extraditing Japanese subjects, who were considerably less numerous.Furthermore, among those suspected of collaboration were figures connected to crucial sectors of Macau's economy and, if proven guilty, their closeness to the Portuguese administration would complicate the latter's record of 'strict neutrality'.In November 1945 an editorial in the Jianguo ribao urged 'the early repossession of Macao by the Chinese', and the Dagongbao reported that the Zhongshan authorities were blockading the territory because of the 'misbehaviour of the Macao authorities for harbouring traitors, conniving smugglers, gamblers, and opium-smokers'.According to the latter, a 'large number of traitors', who had been 'naturalized as Portuguese only by paying several tens of Macao currency dollars as fees', planned to escape to Lisbon on a repatriation ship. 66The S.S. Colonial left Macau in September 1945 and arrived in the Portuguese capital in March 1946.The Chinese legation in Lisbon asked the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs if among those repatriated were any 'enemy persons and traitors' and their property.The Portuguese secret police guaranteed that no Chinese or Japanese subjects had arrived in Lisbon on the repatriation ship. 67Even if that was the case, the ship's passengers had something to say on wartime collaboration, including criticisms of the governor's conduct.Americans in Lisbon got a 'reliable source' to interview some of them.The information was compiled by the U.S. naval attaché in Lisbon in a report that painted a grim picture of Macau as a site of quasi-occupation and collaboration: The Japanese Army completely controlled Macau.The Portuguese officials, the Chinese resident [sic] there and even the Japanese Consul were entirely subservient to them.Receiving orders only from Canton headquarters and acting independently of other Japanese armies in China, the war lords had their General Staff headquarters in Macau, and used it as a pleasure resort where officers spent their leave.Macau was run by brute force during this period, and famine, starvation, disregard of law and order, murder, etc. were rampant.Hundreds of Chinese died on the streets every day, and for a time it is said that their flesh was sold in restaurants as 'smuggled pork from the Japanese zone'.Many Chinese got rich in the service of the Japanese, carrying murder, gambling and the opium trade. 68e situation was more nuanced than this report suggests, but it nevertheless constitutes a telling example of some of the strongest criticisms of Portuguese unneutral conduct articulated in the post-war period.Both the Chinese and the Americans saw the war as a turning point for democracy and anti-colonialism, values the Estado Novo leaders did not share and fought against.Thus, Portuguese officials, acting the sovereign in an international environment hostile to right-wing authoritarianism, sought ways to obstruct reasonable Chinese requests to investigate wartime issues after the conflict.
Those who stayed in Macau were of as much concern to the Chinese officials as any potential escapees, but the Portuguese authorities posed some conditions to assist with extradition.A memorandum from the Portuguese legation in Chongqing in December 1945 stated that 'the Portuguese Government had commited [sic] itself to refuse asylum to war criminals and to surrender those who eventually took refuge in Portuguese territory at the request of an allied nation, presented to it through regular diplomatic channels'.But to 'avoid any arbitrary action', it would surrender only 'those individuals whose names were included on lists of war criminals approved by a responsible government and containing the indication of the tribunal by which their trials would be conducted', excluding 'members of the Japanese armed forces and common law criminals', who 'would be surrendered without those formalities'.The memorandum further stated that until then the Portuguese government had not received from the Chinese 'any request of such kind', despite 'arbitrary action of some Chinese army officers' who sought to interfere with the Portuguese administration. 69From October 1945 the Portuguese authorities in Macau had been visited by different figures who claimed to be representing the Nationalist government.Delegates of the Chinese War Crimes Commission came to see the governor asking for names of Japanese collaborators and some were given. 70he situation soon became confusing, with representatives of that commission, of the Guangdong provincial authorities and of what the governor considered as members of the Blue Shirts competing to take over hanjian and their assets. 71The Portuguese authorities stalled demands, partly in an attempt to understand where power lay, partly -it seems -out of fear for the possibility of a Chinese takeover of Macau.The Chinese minister to Portugal had requested that property belonging to the R.N.G. in Macau should be handed to the Chinese authorities.The Portuguese agreed, as long as there were no doubts that it had belonged to them and that the request was presented in Lisbon through diplomatic channels. 72In theory, this would illustrate Portuguese sovereignty over Macau and, in practice, it would lengthen procedures.
The overlapping layers of wartime collaboration proved to be liabilities in the postwar period.Governor Teixeira expressed concern over the possibility of the Chinese authorities asking for 'some of the Macau Chinese [who] cooperated with us', distancing himself from them by noting that they were not 'people of good character [não sejam boas rezes]'. 73The Chinese authorities compiled lists hundreds of pages long of the alleged hanjian from Macau that contained information on a variety of people, mainly Chinese but also some Japanese (and possibly Taiwanese).Their suspicious activities were mostly of an economic nature. 74ne high-profile case was that of Gao Kening (Kou Ho Neng), who was accused of being an economic traitor (jingji hanjian).Gao's case is paradigmatic of the ambiguities around alleged collaboration, with parallels to some cases of elites in mainland China. 75e was one of the leading businessmen in Macau.A co-owner of the company with the exclusive gambling rights in Macau, 76 he was also a key figure in the legal opium trade, the pawnshop business (important local financial institutions that were especially relevant during the war) and transportation.He was a major philanthropist who had contributed greatly to a number of relief initiatives in wartime Macau, both Chinese and Portuguese, which earned him several decorations by the Portuguese authorities. 77etween 1946 and 1947 China attempted to have Gao extradited but the Portuguese authorities constantly refused, arguing accusations against him were inconsistent, that his good conduct was well known, and that he had purchased food provisions for the people, not to aid the enemy.Emphasizing Gao's charity work as of greater significance than his wartime businesses affirmed him as someone who served the Chinese at a time of need, while also distancing the Portuguese state that had decorated him from negative associations with collaboration.Whatever Gao -and the Portuguese administrationhad done during the conflict under economic and military pressure, was justified by the greater good of social relief.Arguments justifying dealing with Japanese agents to ensure the survival of Chinese civilians did not always work when those on trial were R.N.G. high officials. 78But Gao was a private citizen living in an unoccupied neutral territory and he had a strong base of foreign and local elite backing.Major personalities in associational circles in Macau supported him, such as the representative of the Chinese community, Lu Rongxi; the vice chairman of the Kiang Wu Hospital, He Xian (Ho Yin); the chairman of the Tung Sin Tong, Huang Weilin; and the chairman of the Macau Chinese Commercial Association, Liu Baiying. 79Gao remained in Macau and his patriotic wartime record, notably his charitable work and financial support to the resistance, was brought forward by his colonial and local elite supporters.The Guangdong High Court decided not to prosecute in December 1948. 80ealing with alleged collaborators saw both sides seeking to affirm their sovereignty and, relating to it, the right to manage judicial procedures over people caught in the middle of the ambiguities of Portugal's presence in China.The following two cases of non-elite men accused of treason -Huang Gongjie (Wong Kong Kit) and Lourenço Oswaldo de Senna -illustrate this in greater detail.
Arguably, no hanjian in Macau seems to have been more sought after than Huang Gongjie.A Portuguese missionary who lived in Macau for decades (including during the war), stated that Huang and his wife 'were the greatest criminals in Macao'. 81Huang, who was in his late thirties to early forties during the war, worked for the Japanese special services in the territory.He headed a group of armed men who were deemed responsible for assassinating many Chinese people and were also linked to the murder of the president of the Macau branch of the Portuguese Red Cross in 1945.The attempts by the Chinese government to have Huang handed over for trial in China proved unfruitful and his subsequent death is revealing of the unsolved problems left by an ambivalent neutrality.Chinese sources show that the Chinese government requested the Portuguese authorities to arrest and extradite Huang. 82But the Portuguese were also interested in keeping him as he threatened to provide sensitive information on Portuguese dealings with Japan during the war if he was handed over to the Nationalist authorities.If the country was shown to have been excessively close to Japanese interests, this would tarnish Portugal's reputation, strengthening the Chinese arguments against colonial rule.
The East River Column -a Communist guerrilla group operating in the Pearl River Delta -issued a manifesto on December 1945 concerning 'the war criminal' Huang Gongjie.It stated that Huang and his subordinates had been captured by them and that 'after long and careful trials' they were to be 'sentenced to death according to the law of punishment for War Criminals'.However, because Huang had been active in Macau causing much suffering not only to the Chinese but also to the Portuguese, the Column had accepted the request to hand them over to the Macau authorities 'for public trial'. 83ortuguese accounts stated that, after escaping from Macau at the end of the war, Huang was caught on an island west of Hong Kong by the chief of a special brigade of the Macau police, Sebastião Voltaire Pinto de Morais, in an operation that involved Macau policemen (both Portuguese and Chinese), British intelligence agents and the co-opting of a Communist guerrilla general with whom Huang had planned to link up.84 As the manifesto suggests, the guerrillas regarded his wartime crimes as deserving of exemplary punishment.According to the governor, he paid 200,000 patacas (Macau currency) -Nationalist documents mention other sums -in exchange for the prisoner.85 After being caught, Huang was brought back to Macau from Hong Kong, where, according to some Portuguese accounts, Morais managed to bypass the British, whose intelligence services were also interested in capturing Huang.86 Once arrested, Huang wrote to the governor of Macau to plea for mercy.He stressed his affection for the city and the role he had played to 'save' it, using his favour with the Japanese to guarantee that the territory did not suffer major aggression.He also recalled that he had once been a Chinese patriot, who had worked for the resistance as an undercover agent, before divisions in his group forced him to seek alternative work in Macau.87 This rather self-serving confession seems to be corroborated with earlier Portuguese intelligence that stated Huang had for a while worked for Zhou Yongneng, who had led the K.M.T. branch in Macau, before he left the territory to unoccupied China in 1942.After the K.M.T. branch leader departed to Chongqing, and facing destitution, Huang began to work for the Japanese.He and his gang operated in and around Macau, controlling rice supplies to the enclave, blackmailing and allegedly torturing and killing local traders and going after those deemed enemies of Japan (there was a hit list).88 In his letter to the governor, Huang defended his actions, explaining that he had not been the only one to, in his words, 'pursue the path of friendship with [the] Japs' and, therefore, it was terribly unfair that he was now labelled such a great criminal when 'the real sinners in society are allowed to remain'.Addressing Portuguese neutrality with a mixture of praise and threat, he suggested the real danger to Portuguese rule in Macau was coming from the Nationalists, who were already blockading Macau on the pretext of 'cleaning up … bandits and taking over … enemy property'.89 By exploiting Portuguese colonial anxieties, Huang's words reference an often-overlooked feature of post-war China: the consolidation of the Nationalists as an anti-imperialist force.Their new international status made the authorities from a small colonial power like Portugal somewhat uncomfortable.
The Nationalists sought to assert China's new role in the international community, as well as their domestic authority, through organizing war crimes and collaboration trials. 90he insistence for people like Huang to be handed over for trial spoke to these national and transnational dimensions of post-war justice.Under Chiang Kai-shek's instructions, the M.O.F.A. delegate in Macau, Tang Liu, wrote to the governor in late December 1945 asking for Huang to be extradited to Guangzhou to be tried.After failed attempts to get the Portuguese to hand Huang over, they finally agreed to do it. 91owever, in early January 1946, as Huang was being moved from one detention centre to another under very suspicious circumstances, he was shot dead after allegedly trying to escape.The local newspapers reported that he had attempted to flee and was pursued by the police, who shot him several times.He was then sent to a hospital, where he died.The Chinese authorities sought to investigate Huang's suspicious death.Tang presented a series of demands to the governor of Macau to ensure this would not happen again.Dai Li, the head of the Nationalist intelligence agency, the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (Juntong), had investigated the case and concluded in February that the Macau government had collaborated with the Japanese and, worried that Huang Gongjie might reveal secrets to the Chinese, had spent money to get him back to Macau to be killed.The explanation that he had tried to flee was false.Later accounts of the case take for granted that Huang was deliberately shot by the Portuguese. 92The strange death of Huang in Portuguese custody contrasts with the efforts of the Nationalists to give him a proper trial.Justice was a key arena for affirming sovereignty and, tellingly, the twistsand-turns of its exercise in Huang's case reflect the problems of dealing with the legacies of an ambivalent neutrality in a contested jurisdiction.
Huang Gongjie was the most notorious, but he was certainly not the only alleged hanjian to be at the centre of difficult negotiations between the Nationalist government and the Portuguese authorities.Unresolved debates on the nature of Portuguese sovereignty in Macau, as well as over the classification of hanjian as war criminals also marred a process that was marked not only by Portuguese reluctance to hand over suspects to the Chinese authorities, but also by internal conflicts with those in charge of dealing with extradition issues on the Chinese side.Wu Su-feng observed that bribery and obstruction accompanied the attempts of extraditing alleged hanjian hiding in Macau, with competing Nationalist officials involved in the process, colonial authorities resisting attempts to extradite some suspects and widespread irregularities, including powerful individuals paying for police protection and avoiding extradition.Impecunious suspects who were arrested in Macau and sent to the mainland largely ended up acquitted by the Guangdong high court due to lack of guilt or of evidence. 93ighlighting practices of corruption, Wu links the limits in the post-war pursuit of justice to the lack of decolonization in 1940s Macau.As it ruled the enclave as a colony, Portugal was able to act like a sovereign and hamper Nationalist agents' efforts to exercise justice as thoroughly as they had intended.
If Huang Gongjie's case exposed the thin line between those acting for resistance and collaboration and the failure to pursue regular legal channels, the case of Lourenço Oswaldo de Senna is suggestive of the flexible definition of hanjian and the intricacies of legal procedures at a time when extraterritoriality was being abolished.This case is also revealing of the ambiguities of nationality and of how different states couldwith different levels of (in)success -claim authority over 'in-between people' in the post-war order, when citizenship became more narrowly defined than before.Senna, a Portuguese citizen born in Shanghai of a Portuguese father and Chinese mother, 94 was detained in Chongqing from 1944 until 1950.A Eurasian, he assumed a Chinese identity on certain occasions and wrote to the Portuguese consulate in English only.When the Sino-Japanese hostilities began in 1937, he left for Macau, where he served in the police force.In October 1943 he resigned and went to mainland China in search of a better salary.He adopted a Chinese name and lived first in Guilin and then in Kunming, where he worked for the American Red Cross.In December 1944 Senna was arrested for espionage while he was with his Chinese wife and son and was brought to Chongqing.The Chinese authorities accused him of having raided a clandestine radio station in the house of a Chinese man in Macau, who was arrested; of having had repeated contacts with Japanese people in Macau, including with the consulate; of having handed a number of 'Chinese patriots' to the Japanese; and of having spied for the Japanese special service in Macau while in China.Senna claimed he was tortured and forced to sign a confession in Chinese he could not read, and that during the trial he was not given an interpreter and had to use Mandarin, a language he did not master (though he was fluent in spoken Shanghainese and Cantonese). 95ortuguese diplomats ensured Senna's legal costs were covered.As a Portuguese citizen in China, he was still protected under extraterritoriality (which, in Portugal's case, was abolished only in 1947) and, they reasoned, he could not be tried in Chinese courts for acts he committed in a Portuguese colony while on police duty. 96The Macau authorities confirmed Senna's defence, including that he had even been given a reference by the British consul in Macau before leaving for mainland China. 97Senna's ordeal was to last throughout the civil war, whose outcome would ultimately save him.Although in August 1946 he was reported to have been freed, 98 in October he was sentenced to 'imprisonment for an indefinite period of time' and to have his property confiscated by the Sichuan Higher Court for having collaborated with the enemy 'in gathering for it military, political an[d] economical [sic] information' about Allied forces in China. 99He decided to appeal to the Highest Court in Nanjing and insisted that the verdict was 'a most terrible miscarriage of justice' and that he was 'innocent of any crime or intention against the Chinese Government or any government'. 100Senna had been charged 'not as a spy, but as a traitor', and he wondered how he could have been one if he was not Chinese. 101Although unusual, his case was not unique, as the Chinese authorities tried to bring to justice other foreigners accused of being hanjian, notably French and Russian nationals, as well as people whose Chinese citizenship was, in legal terms, uncertain at best at the time, such as Taiwanese citizens. 102enna's appeal noted that he had inclusively helped the Allies, using his connection with the Macau police to 'furnish the British consulate with information obtained by him from the Japanese' and after the latter became suspicious, he had decided to leave for Free China.He stated that in Macau, only the British consul knew where he was going though in his memoirs, the consul did not seem to be entirely in the know of Senna's innocence. 103ortuguese diplomats in China and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lisbon tried to clarify Senna's situation with the Chinese authorities on several occasions to no effect. 104hinese representatives used the case to affirm their regained sovereignty in the post-war period.In September 1948 the Chinese minister in Lisbon said the case would be retried but with courts being independent there was a limit to what the government could do.The minister stressed that Senna had confessed to the acts of treason he was being accused of, for which the sentence was usually the death penalty, and that only because of his confession had it been commuted to life. 105In early November 1949 Senna was condemned again. 106Statements backing his defence had been written in Macau by, among others, the governor and the former British consul, 107 but these were deemed too vague in court.A letter to the Chinese minister to Portugal, Wang Huazheng, pleaded that the Portuguese government expected from the Chinese an 'attitude of generosity' similar to that shown by the British government, which had freed and deported Rogério de Menezes, a Portuguese citizen who had been sentenced to death for espionage. 108The comparison is intriguing, for Menezes was indeed guilty of spying for the Germans when working for the Portuguese legation in London. 109The reply was similar to his predecessor's the year before: he would relay the request to his government for consideration. 110At the end of November Senna was finally freed as the warden of Chongqing prison received orders to release all prisoners as the Nationalists fled the city.His escape is revealing of the networks to which foreigners in China could resort in troubled times -and also how these were still standing in the 1949 transition to Communist rule.Senna left Chongqing with the help of the Paris Foreign Catholic Mission Society, travelling by boat to Hankou, where he reported to the British consulate, which was in charge of Portuguese interests.In Hankou he asked for help at the Colombian Catholic Mission and stayed with Portuguese friends but was taken by the police and was questioned over a few days.According to Senna's statement, the Communists treated him quite nicely, only asking him for information on British, American and missionary contacts.After being offered a book of Mao Zedong's writings he ended up being expelled to Hong Kong via Guangzhou.At the Hong Kong border, as he had no passport, Senna once again assumed a Chinese identity to enter the British colony and from there he went to Macau. 111 This case highlights how the ambivalences of the Portuguese presence in China could intersect with issues of collaboration and the misunderstandings these generated in the post-war period, when attempts were made to impose a nation-state-based sovereign-order through decisions on who was a citizen, who was a 'traitor', and how -and by whomjustice should be administered.For the Portuguese authorities, Senna's case was a vivid example of the shortcomings of Chinese justice, with its Kafkaesque delays and refusals to accept the arguments provided to justify the innocence of a foreign citizen.From a Chinese perspective, suspicions about Senna were arguably also understandable.He was seen as Chinese, and the Nationalist government did not treat collaboration lightly.While in China Senna had assumed a Chinese identity and lived with his Chinese family.The fact that he had worked for the police in Macau and then appeared in cities in unoccupied China with a strong presence of Allied intelligence without, it seems, assuming his Portuguese nationality, would have seemed odd.Furthermore, it was well known that Portuguese citizenship had been granted to people with spurious claims on it during the war so brandishing it might have not been given too much credit. 112Like other allegations of Portuguese wartime misconduct, Senna's case was dropped at the end of the civil war and was left lying largely hidden in the archives, 113 as yet another forgotten example of the problems between the Portuguese and the Nationalists in the changing post-war order, when it suddenly became paramount to draw clear lines between 'patriots' and 'traitors', and matters of jurisdiction over mobile people like Senna became more contentious and inflexible.* As Senna's trials and tribulations indicate, a key element of tension in solving wartime issues and exercising Chinese sovereignty pertained to the remnants of extraterritoriality.Extraterritoriality was a legal regime that permitted citizens of countries with such rights in China to be placed outside the latter's jurisdiction, answering to their resident consul and facing trial in consular courts.It had long been one of the most contentious issues in the R.O.C.'s foreign relations.Strongly opposed by Chinese governments, particularly after the end of the First World War, its abolition began to be seriously negotiated when the Nationalists came to power in the late 1920s, although the start of the Second Sino-Japanese conflict halted the process. 114In a first phase discussions for its abolition were postponed, but the later globalization of the conflict precipitated the end of the system when the U.S. and the United Kingdom both took steps to abolish extraterritorial rights 111 A.H.D., 2P, A59, M263, Report written by Senna sent by Affra, from Macau, to M.N.E., 7 Feb.1950. 112Writing to Lisbon on the cold reception given by the new mayor of Shanghai, K. C. Wu (Wu Guozhen), to a courtesy visit by the Portuguese consul, José Francisco Teixeira, the Portuguese chargé d'affaires to China, who had met Wu several times in Chongqing, noted that Portugal's consulate general in Shanghai enjoyed 'a very sad reputation'.The former consul, José Augusto Ribeiro de Melo, was rumoured to have practiced irregularities that brought scandal to the consulate, notably registering as Portuguese citizens people of various nationalities, particularly Chinese (A.H.D., 2P, A48, M212, Affra to Salazar, 6 June 1946). 113The case is briefly mentioned in on paper in 1943 facing the fact that they had already been abolished in practice.Contrary to what is often mentioned, negotiations for the end of extraterritoriality with other countries actually continued during the post-war period.The Portuguese government managed to stall the process for longer than most, renouncing extraterritoriality only in 1947, although the main reason for doing so was not resistance to give up rights in mainland China but its refusal to include Macau in the negotiations.
Chinese diplomats in Lisbon had tried several times to address extraterritoriality during the war, but the matter was constantly postponed by Portugal.In 1944 the first secretary in Lisbon was told that Portugal would make a decision when the act of abolishing extraterritoriality would not be seen as an action against one of the belligerents. 115Such an agreement with Chiang's government could instigate retaliation by Japan, including a potential occupation of Macau that, with the war still ongoing, would benefit neither the Portuguese nor the Nationalists.Portuguese policymakers were closely following the developments of other countries' negotiations with China, asking its diplomats in different European countries and in and Brazil for information on their cases.France, also a colonial power with interests in China, was an important reference.The Chinese government had unilaterally denounced all French privileges at the time of the Vichy regime but such was not immediately accepted by the post-war French government.Eventually France reached an agreement on the return to Chinese sovereignty of the leased territory of Guangzhouwan before negotiating the end of extraterritoriality, in late February 1946. 116However, there was an important difference between the French and the Portuguese positions.In French concessions in China and in Guangzhouwan, occupation by Japan towards the end of the war had paved the way to de facto decolonization.In Macau neutrality had spared the Portuguese the precedent of having been removed from power.
Soon after the war ended, the Chinese legation in Lisbon insisted that negotiations begin with the Portuguese government to abolish extraterritoriality.In September the minister, Zhang Qian, went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to press Portugal to relinquish its rights in China. 117The Sino-Portuguese Treaty signed in Nanjing in December 1928 had scheduled the abolition of extraterritoriality to 1930, provided that the Chinese government signed agreements with the signatory powers of the 1921-2 Washington Treaties and made detailed agreements with Portugal for the matter. 118With the end of the war, the Portuguese government was pressured to initiate negotiations.In 1945, on the R.O.C. national day, 10 October, a note was delivered to the Chinese minister in Lisbon in which the Portuguese government declared its decision to renounce extraterritoriality and that that should come into effect after the signing of a Sino-Portuguese convention to be negotiated. 119The note was relayed to Chongqing at the end of the month. 120efore such an agreement was sealed, however, a number of contentious issues hampered the negotiations.In December 1945 the Chinese legation in Lisbon stated that the consular courts of all powers had ceased to operate in China and Portugal was to be no exception. 121Portugal refused as it had not yet finished negotiating the relinquishment of its extraterritorial privileges. 122The issue was particularly significant given the detention of some Portuguese citizens in China accused of different crimes, including collaboration, against which legal protections from facing trial in a Chinese court could be useful.
Then there was the ever-thorny question of Macau.If the latter was treated as a foreign concession, the door would be open for decolonization.The Chinese government intended to reserve its position on Macau but, predictably, this was deemed unacceptable by the Portuguese authorities, as the Portuguese chargé d'affaires relayed to the Chinese vice minister of foreign affairs in Nanjing. 123The only reservation the Portuguese government would be open to consider was on the borders of Macau, not on Portuguese sovereignty over the enclave. 124etropolitan and local approaches to Macau did differ at times.The governor saw in the extraterritoriality negotiations a good opportunity to fix the disputed borders of the territory to Portugal's advantage.He advised the minister of colonies that although it would be difficult, Portugal should try to obtain Montanha (Da Hengqin) island in exchange for clearly renouncing Lappa (Duimianshan) and D. João (Xiao Hengqin) 125 none of which Portugal de facto controlled.The fact that a 1946 official map excluded the islands from the country's jurisdiction suggests that the Portuguese government took a different position from the Macau authorities. 126In November 1946, without Lisbon's knowledge, the latter banned the distribution of an edition of the South China Morning Post due to a news report on Sino-Portuguese negotiations for the abolition of extraterritoriality on the pretext that it suggested that Macau was equivalent to other foreign concessions in China. 127he Chinese government had prepared a draft for a Sino-Portuguese treaty with fourteen articles to be celebrated possibly in Lisbon and that included the transfer of the administration and control of Macau to the R.O.C. 128 Predictably, the Portuguese government did everything in their power to prevent the Macau issue from being linked to its renunciation of extraterritorial rights in China.It is important to note that the Portuguese Estado Novo regime's intransigence regarding its colonial possessions was not a matter for open public debate.The majority of people in Portugal were kept in the dark about the foreign policy decisions made by the country's leaders.Indeed, unlike in China, there was no news in the Portuguese press about the exchange of notes with China when it eventually occurred. 129fter a lengthy period of impasse an agreement was reached between Portugal and the R.O.C. to postpone indefinitely the discussion of the 'Macau problem' and thus withdraw the major impediment to the negotiations for the abolition of Portuguese extraterritorial rights in China.It has been argued that with the civil war looming, it became pressing for Chiang Kai-shek's regime to secure a diplomatic victory -even without Macau's handover -in order to appease sectors of the Chinese public who were becoming increasingly hostile to the K.M.T. 130 However, in 1947 the Nationalists' defeat was not yet a fait accompli and, in any case, the agreement with Portugal was far from a major breakthrough.There were also advantages to Portugal in reaching a settlement, as this agreement restored Sino-Portuguese relations to normalcy after years of ambivalent practice during the war and left Macau with the guarantee of a continued status quo.
Notes 'for the relinquishment by Portugal of its rights relating to the consular jurisdiction in China and the adjustment of certain other matters' were finally exchanged between the Portuguese minister, J. B. Ferreira da Fonseca, and the Chinese minister of foreign affairs, Wang Shijie, in Nanjing on 1 April 1947. 131The notes abrogated all the 'provisions of treaties or agreements in force [the wording 'in force' allowed for the exclusion of Macau, the jurisdiction of which had never been unequivocally clarified] between both countries which authorize the Government of Portugal or its representatives to exercise consular jurisdiction over nationals or companies of the Republic of Portugal in the territory of the Republic of China'. 132Excluding a financial agreement between China and Macau and an agreement signed in 1948 between the Macau authorities and the Chinese Maritime Customs concerning smuggling between Macau and South China, 133 the notes relinquishing consular jurisdiction were the last diplomatic agreement between Portugal and the R.O.C. to be signed until the official breaking of diplomatic ties between the two countries in 1975. 134

*
The absence of Macau in the 1947 notes did not settle the problems left by its ambiguous wartime neutrality.After Portuguese extraterritoriality was officially abolished, calls for the retrocession of the territory intensified in the Chinese press.A critical discourse on the ambiguities of wartime experience was key to those.The undemocratic nature of the Portuguese regime and the existence of 'immoral activities' in Macau (gambling, opium and prostitution) were also pointed out.Critics claimed that the enclave 'had been the centre of Japanese espionage and refuge for "collaborationists" during the war', that neutrality had not been maintained, and that Portugal had 'helped the enemy'. 135A letter to the editor of the China Weekly Review went as far as to portray the governor during the war as 'a warm-hearted collaborator with the "Imperial Army"'. 136Meanwhile, a resolution was passed by members of the People's Political Council (P.P.C.) asking the government for Macau's return as the issue had not been included in the agreement abolishing extraterritoriality. 137 The following month twenty-one P.P.C. members presented recommendations to the president of the Executive Yuan, Zhang Qun, advocating 'the immediate recovery of Macau' arguing that 'during the war, Portugal violated her neutrality to the detriment of China's war efforts'. 138In July the Legislative Yuan decided that steps should be made for the 'recovery' (shouhui) of Macau 'at the earliest possibility' (zui duan shi nei).The government ordered the Executive Yuan to start negotiations with the relevant authorities. 139acau was portrayed as a place where suspects of war crimes and collaboration avoided Chinese justice.An article in the K.M.T.'s official newspaper Zhongyang ribao (Central News Daily) labelled Macau a 'criminals' playground' (fanzuizhe de leyuan). 140In an attempt to placate this sort of attack, which damaged Portuguese prestige by questioning the legitimacy of its sovereignty claims, the consul in Hong Kong, Eduardo Brazão, approached the British authorities in search of some inter-imperial solidarity, playing on yet another of the ambiguities that had shaped the war years in Macau. 141The response was lukewarm.Taking a different stand on the matter, the consul in Guangzhou, José Calvet de Magalhães, argued that a joint action with Britain would not be advantageous to Portugal and the country should act independently. 142Sino-British interactions had been experiencing a number of clashes linked to the Kowloon Walled City, including the burning of the British consulate in Guangzhou in January 1948.In contrast, relations with Portugal entered a more positive track.
Elite personal connections were crucial to the gradual improvement in relations between the Portuguese and the Nationalist authorities in the late 1940s.In August 1947, shortly after a branch of the Chinese Central News Agency was established in Macau,143 Sun Fo (Sun Ke), Sun Yat-sen's son and president of the Legislative Yuan since 1932 (who would become premier in 1948) was invited by the governor to visit Macau, where some of his family, including his mother, still lived. 144In the run-up to his visit the M.O.F.A. delegate in Hong Kong told the Portuguese consul that he was worried that the Macau government would give Sun Fo an overly grand reception, making his visit appear official. 145That could be presented as a tacit acknowledgement of Portuguese sovereignty over Macau.Although labelling it a 'personal visit', the authorities in Macau gave Sun an impressive welcome, and the consul concluded that Sun's passage through Macau as a 'guest of honour' was of 'great utility'. 146Sun's words on Sino-Portuguese friendship at a banquet made the news even in Lisbon. 147At the end of the month it was reported in the Macau press that Chiang Kai-shek had ordered Chinese newspapers in Guangdong to stop their calls for the handover of Macau. 148 The Portuguese could read visits such as Sun Fo's as their successes and as an implicit recognition of their sovereignty in Macau even if those had nothing to do with sanctioning Portugal's colonial rule.The enthusiastic welcome Sun received from Macau's residents can, in fact, be seen as an expression of Chinese patriotism.Still, the pursuit of good relations with the Nationalists illustrated that the Portuguese in China knew where the ultimate decisionmaking power over Macau lay: not in Lisbon but in the Chinese capital.
This restoration of amiable ties with Nationalists figures can be understood in a context of changing priorities in the region, notably the co-option of foreign circles to secure a pro-Chiang, anti-Communist redoubt in South China. 149Personal connections, some forged during the war were important for this.In September 1947 a new governor arrived in Macau, Albano Rodrigues de Oliveira.He had lived in China in 1937-8, having been interim consul general at Guangzhou, where he had befriended the then governor Wu Tiecheng, a major K.M.T. figure.Oliveira went on an official visit to the city the same month he assumed the governorship. 150He was received by General Zhang Fakui; the provincial governor, Luo Zhuoying; the mayor of Guangzhou, Ouyang Ju; and Admiral Chan Chak (Chen Ce). 151This connection was nurtured in the following years, with Oliveira considering Wu Tiecheng 'an old friend'. 152Wu was appointed minister of foreign affairs at the end of 1948 and when meeting the Portuguese minister in Nanjing in the first audience given to members of the diplomatic corps, Wu referred to the 'very good personal and official relations' he had had with the governor of Macau in the past. 153Bilateral relations also improved markedly after the appointment of premier T. V. Soong (Song Ziwen) as governor of Guangdong in the same month. 154Soong -who was Chiang Kai-shek's brother in law and had been minister of foreign affairs during the war -had told the consul at Guangzhou, Calvet de Magalhães, that he expected Portuguese co-operation so that asylum was not given in Macau to 'political discontents' of the region -a likely reference to the C.C.P. and other opponents of Chiang. 155hinese relations with Portugal and Macau improved significantly, due in part to the very cordial relationship that developed between Soong and Calvet de Magalhães.In a fifteen-page despatch the consul exposed his appreciation for Soong, who he perceived positively as the most Westernized politician in China who wanted to modernize China along Western models, a description that matches similar accounts of the period such as Thunder Out of China, which the consul quoted. 156Highlighting the new state of relations, the Chinese Double Ten (10 October) national day was effusively celebrated in Macau in 1947.The main Portuguese-language newspaper went as far as to post on the front page portraits of Sun Yat-sen; Lei Peng Seak, president of the Macau Branch of the K.M.T.; and Guo Zefan, the M.O.F.A. delegate since 1946, accompanied by quotes on democracy 157 -a concept controversial in Portugal's Estado Novo.The Nationalists also won a symbolic victory when the Portuguese authorities finally agreed to ban opium in Macau, a decision the latter would probably not have taken on their own volition.The trade was banned in late 1945, and opium houses were closed in mid 1947, after the implementation of rehabilitation plans for addicts. 158This shows that the Nationalists were able to shape developments in post-war Macau even without retaking control of its administration.
The Nationalists were also successful in ending Portuguese claims over islands around the enclave.In January 1948 Soong asked Calvet de Magalhães -who had come to see him about rice supplies -to intervene with the Macau government to recall the Portuguese police officers posted at Maliaohe, on Montanha island. 159Two police officers had remained there since the war, when governor Artur Tamagnini de Barbosa had tried to use the Japanese invasion as a pretext to extend Portuguese control over the islands through a police presence. 160Chinese control over the island finally resumed in full.Despite an improvement in bilateral relations, the Nationalists did not give up on the goal of affirming their sovereignty over Macau.Among the proposals presented at the National Assembly in April 1948 was one calling for the retrocession of the territory. 161s relations between the Nationalists and the Portuguese took a more positive turn, the uncomfortable ambiguities of neutrality were reinterpreted in a more favourable light.In April 1948, on the occasion of the commemorations in Macau of the twentieth anniversary of Salazar's rule, figures of the Chinese community praised Portugal's role in the war, dispelling accusations of collaboration.Guo Zefan highlighted the ceding of basing rights in the Azores as a valuable act of Portuguese co-operation with the Allies.Then chairman of the board of directors of the Commercial Association Liu Baiying mentioned how many 'cultivated individuals, merchants and capitalists' from all over China had sought refuge in Macau during the war and contributed to the development of the enclave's commerce and industry, 162 an observation that can be prone to different readings given how some of these figures had been intermediaries between the Portuguese authorities and Japanese and R.N.G. authorities.
The importance of personal connections with certain notable figures of late-K.M.T. rule in the mainland was stressed by Portuguese actors until a fairly late stage of the civil war but there was a limit to what these could achieve.In 1948 the Portuguese minister to China wrote several times to Lisbon recommending the upgrade of the Portuguese legation to embassy, stressing that only a few countries still kept legations instead of embassies and ministers plenipotentiaries instead of ambassadors.Given preferred to wait and the country established official diplomatic relations with Beijing only in 1979, though unofficial contacts had been going on for decades via Macau. 170 These, too, were marked by pragmatic arrangements springing from the ambiguities of neutrality, this time neutrality in the civil war.

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This article has argued that Portugal's wartime neutrality exacerbated the ambiguities of its presence in China, impacting Sino-Portuguese relations after the conflict.Those ambiguities allowed leeway for political manoeuvring in the aftermath of the war when China sought to assert its sovereignty in a new world order.Portugal's Estado Novo, itself uncertain of its international status in an increasingly postcolonial world, also tried to act the sovereign by defending its record of neutrality -and, by association, its colonial rule in Macau.Disagreements on issues left by the war were inextricably connected to China and Portugal's radically different views on colonialism in the late 1940s.Nationalist China emerged from the Second World War as a victorious, anti-imperialist world power that, after a century of foreign impositions, had regained control over most foreignruled territories in the country.Interactions with Portugal revealed the Nationalists' determination to assume their heightened post-war status but also the difficulties in doing so in the face of Portuguese efforts to retain colonial rule over Macau.Because of wartime neutrality the enclave had avoided the transfer of power that the war had brought about elsewhere.Tackling perceived unneutral actions that had occurred in the mainland and in Macau during the war, the Nationalists sought to deal with enemy property and alleged criminals and collaborators as a sovereign state.However, their efforts were marred by internal division and external prejudice.Sino-Portuguese relations reveal limitations in China's exercise of its new position, from difficulties in getting people extradited to the option of not retaking Macau immediately after the war, despite its return to Chinese rule being advocated by some as a way of dealing with its complicated wartime record.But Portugal's flexible neutrality had multiple beneficiaries, including those on the winners' side, so it could easily be portrayed as having been advantageous for China (for example, refugee relief) rather than a cause for condemnation (for example, collaboration with Japan); that is, it could be deployed to support Portuguese sovereignty claims rather than to confirm their illegitimacy.The hazy identities of several of those who had operated in and around the shadowlands of Macau during the war provided a pointed example of the difficulty of labelling people when exercising post-war justice, as in the case of a collaborationist gang leader who began as an agent for the resistance or that of a Portuguese Eurasian police officer who found himself on trial as a Chinese traitor.The wartime record of individuals and institutions was far more complicated that a clear-cut binary of resistance and collaboration, and this was particularly evident in in-between neutral spaces like Macau.
Although post-war Sino-Portuguese relations were haunted by the ghosts of wartime collaboration, their record was mixed.The Nationalists succeeded in negotiating with Portugal the abolition of extraterritoriality and in getting the infamous opium trade in Macau prohibited.These were Chinese anti-imperialist success stories that predated 1949.From 1947 more cordial bilateral relations began to take shape through personal connections, further stalling any radical moves to force the Portuguese to leave Macau.The civil war ultimately derailed a Nationalist-led decolonization of Macau.Even Pl e a s e n o t e: C h a n g e s m a d e a s a r e s ul t of p u blis hi n g p r o c e s s e s s u c h a s c o py-e di ti n g, fo r m a t ti n g a n d p a g e n u m b e r s m a y n o t b e r efl e c t e d in t his ve r sio n.Fo r t h e d efi nitiv e ve r sio n of t hi s p u blic a tio n, pl e a s e r ef e r t o t h e p u blis h e d s o u r c e.You a r e a d vis e d t o c o n s ul t t h e p u blis h e r's v e r sio n if yo u wi s h t o cit e t hi s p a p er. Thi s v e r sio n is b ei n g m a d e a v ail a bl e in a c c o r d a n c e wit h p u blis h e r p olici e s.