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6. We dealt briefly with some other current items of business. Ramos confirmed that Chinese was to be given equal status with Portuguese in the territory, though of course English was the only real business language in Macau. He was pessimistic that it would be possible to translate Macau's laws into Chinese before 1999, if ever. There simply were not the resources available. Ramos confirmed that localisation of the civil service (Evetts' teleletter of 20 April) had been a major topic recently. Most of the problems had been caused by disagreements over what localisation meant, which principally arose from a disagreement over the nationality status of those involved. The question had largely been solved by a fudge, whereby the two sides had agreed that localisation should proceed with proportional increases in the number of Macanese and Chinese in the civil service. Ramos commented that the supply of high level civil servants from Lisbon who ordinarily did one or two three-year tours was expected to dry up shortly. They would need to be replaced by Macanese. I asked him about newspaper reports that civil servants were to be given the right of automatic admission to the Portuguese civil service. Ramos said that of course most of those who came from Portugal retained the right to reinstatement. There was a problem about what was to be done with Macanese who did not have existing links to the Portuguese civil service. He took it as axiomatic that something would need to be done for all those who wished to leave, which he assumed would be likely to be a great majority. A policy submission was currently being studied in Lisbon and he expected the Portuguese Government to acknowledge the need to give such people an escape route.
7. As this last point makes clear, Ramos was fairly pessimistic about the prospects for Macau's autonomy. He said in terms that he doubted whether it would be possible for Macau to be autonomous after 1999 and he equally doubted whether the Chinese wanted this. A small vignette typical of his general approach was when he commented that he did not like driving on the left in Macau (which they do in deference to Hong Kong) but he assumed this would be changed in the run up to 1999, since "the Chinese leaders are hardly likely to wish to change to the other side of the road when they drive into Macau". He is an experienced sinologue and spoke at length about political uncertainties there. He thought that in the next decade there would be problems which would be likely to adversely affect the "one country two systems" policy.
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