Although Macau became a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China in 1999, foreign judges from Portugal have continued to be appointed to Macau’s courts. Macau is remarkable for the way that the institution of foreign judges is emblematically inscribed in the Basic Law, and in this context, foreign judges have a dual value, not only bringing their individual expertise and judicial values to the Macau judiciary, but also importing the characteristics and values of the legal system in which they originate. This dual role helps to fulfil the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy and uphold its corollaries, including the continuance of a legal system that is different from that in the Mainland, based on the principles of judicial independence and impartiality. The chapter highlights two worrying trends: the declining number and proportion of foreign judges appointed to Macau’s courts, and the exclusion of foreign judges from cases involving ‘national security’ issues.

Japanese occupation of British Asia challenged British prestige at an unprecedented scale, but what the War challenged about Britishness went far beyond the myth of white supremacy. This chapter explains how the Second World War shattered the cosmopolitan, inclusive notions of Britishness that developed in pre-war Hong Kong. Even before the outbreak of war, systemic discrimination involved in the 1940 evacuation scheme made colonial subjects realize that Britishness was reduced to a ‘race’ at moments of crisis. The chapter also explored the varied wartime experience of Portuguese refugees in Macau, students and graduates of the University of Hong Kong, and members of the British Army Aid Group (B.A.A.G.). Increased interactions with the British state made some acutely aware of the racism they experienced under British colonialism, and eroded their identification with Britishness. The practicalities of war, then, highlighted the fragility of the rhetoric of imperial cosmopolitanism, and put the diverse forms of Britishness articulated in pre-war Hong Kong to a severe test.

The Epilogue addresses the legacies of wartime neutrality and collaboration in Macau. The war period provided a peculiar blueprint for later developments in terms of bilateral Sino–Portuguese relations and of local practices in the enclave, including towards new waves of refugees. The Epilogue also covers recent written and visual representations of wartime neutrality and collaboration in Macau.

This chapter centres on Macau’s experience from the occupation of Hong Kong in December 1941 until the end of the war in September 1945, when the enclave became the last foreign-ruled territory in China to remain unoccupied by Japan. It argues that collaboration through compliance was a way of avoiding occupation. In this period, the practice of neutrality in Macau reached a peak of ambiguity. It was marked by the interplay of different forces and important new players competing for political legitimacy, economic control and social influence. These included Chiang Kai-shek’s government, Wang Jingwei’s Reorganised National Government, Portuguese colonial authorities, Japanese military forces and local elites.

This chapter introduces the main themes and arguments of the book. It places Macau in the history and historiography of the Second World War in China and in Portugal, and contrasts Macau with other foreign-ruled territories in China, such as the International Settlement and the French Concession in Shanghai. The chapter also revisits the history of Sino–Portuguese relations in Macau, framing the enclave’s Second World War experience in a larger context of global connections, ambiguities and relative autonomy unfolding since the sixteenth century.

This chapter analyses the multifaceted impact of the arrival of thousands of refugees in Macau, showing how relief activities depended on the pragmatic interplay and cooperation of different state and non-state actors. Focusing on Chinese refugees from Shanghai and Guangdong province, and on Portuguese Eurasian refugees from Shanghai and Guangzhou, the chapter details how an unprecedented refugee influx constituted both a crisis and an opportunity for the territory’s administration, local population and the refugees themselves. These wartime refugee waves led to the emergence of a peculiar wartime cosmopolitanism in Macau, which sprang from new flows of people, capital and ideas from major treaty-port metropolises.

This chapter focuses on the experience of Hong Kong refugees in Macau. It addresses the role the British consulate in Macau played in refugee management and intelligence networks, explaining how the enclave was an important base and a connecting node for British operations. This chapter argues that Macau played an important supportive role to many in and from Hong Kong from late 1941 to the end of the war. It allowed for escapees to reach unoccupied China, for a great number of refugees to receive assistance, for intelligence to be gathered and for resistance activities to be coordinated. The chapter highlights the significant experience of colonial transplantation that allowed the British to keep a foothold in South China and facilitated the reoccupation of Hong Kong.

With an international focus, this chapter analyses Portuguese neutrality in wartime China before the fall of Hong Kong in late 1941, with reference to the British and Japanese imperial presence in the region. It argues that the war in South China saw Macau and its Portuguese administration engaged constantly with these two major imperial powers in a precarious balance marked by continuities in Portugal’s relations with its old ally, the United Kingdom, and a novel proximity to Japan that generated contradictory practices on the ground.

This chapter demostrates that the ambiguities of wartime neutrality in Macau continued to haunt China’s relations with Portugal in the post-war years. Five interconnected issues relating to Portuguese neutrality evidence China’s post-war quest for justice and recognition: 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 critiques of neutrality in calls to return Macau to Chinese rule. These issues raised questions about the meaning of justice and the legitimacy of who got to wield it. In its relations with a small and relatively weak European colonial power, China sought to affirm its new post-war international status. However, this process was constrained by resistance to the Nationalists’ anti-imperialist goals in South China and by the changing fortunes of Nationalist power as the Chinese Civil War unfolded.

This chapter addresses Macau’s place in China’s war with Japan from the early 1930s to 1941. Macau featured in Chinese resistance efforts from the start, but its relevance became more pronounced after 1937, especially after Guangdong province was engulfed in the conflict. The chapter argues that, due to its neutrality, Macau became an important meeting place for competing Chinese actors. Both those engaged in Chinese resistance – Nationalists, communists and others – and collaborators with Japan (before and after the consolidation of Wang Jingwei’s Reorganised National Government) used the enclave to circulate materials and propaganda, to mobilise others for their cause and to reach out to opponents.

This chapter reviews China’s BIT-related ISDS cases, in particular the awards on jurisdiction, and the tribunals’ varying techniques in interpreting the ISDS clauses in China’s BITs with a focus on jurisprudential analysis of these cases and the tribunals’ treaty interpretive techniques. In brief, the tribunals have tended to take an expansive approach when called upon to determine jurisdictional issues. Albeit largely jurisprudential, a sense of the tribunals’ treaty interpretation techniques may help shape some foundational underpinnings for China’s policy response to the proposals to reform the ISDS system made by the EU, the USA and others. This chapter also touches on two unique procedural rules in Chinese BITs: (1) those relating to the legal standing of investors originated from Hong Kong and Macau, and (2) those relating to SOEs. Chinese SOEs are often involved in public international law as the governmental instrument triggering state responsibility for breaches of international law due to the rules of state attribution.