Search results

The purpose of this paper is to understand the regime–youth relationship in Macao. It will use the framework by Weiss and Aspinall (2012) to explain the rise of Macao youth activism and the de-harmonization of their relationship with the authorities.

According to Weiss and Aspinall, the emergence of youth movements in Asia after the Second World War was based on four factors: the development higher education systems, youth’s collective identities, youth’s trust in the ruling regime and transnational flows of activist ideas and inspirations. This paper analyzes the rise of Macao youth through the four dimensions by Weiss and Aspinall.

The rise of Macao youth movement is attributable to the development of tertiary education, youth’s collective identities, lowered trust in the regime and international inspiration. Better-educated Macao youth have been increasing their demands for political participation while their distrust in the MSAR government pushes their mobilization. The rise of youth movements around the world after the millennium inspires Macao youth activists’ political mobilization. Interestingly, Macao’s youth movement has been gradually integrated into the opposition forces instead of campaigning by youth organizations. In response to youth activism, the MSAR government, however, could not alleviate the youth’s hostility against the authorities, but its repressive approach intensified the regime-youth tension.

The paper includes interviews with leaders of young activists for their understanding of youth movement in Macao. It can serve the purpose for comparative study of youth movement among Asian societies.

Talent development has become an important policy given prominence by the Macao government since Fernando Chui became its Chief Executive. The purpose of this paper is to review human resources and talent development policies in Macao and discuss the difficulties and challenges that they pose.

Using Macao as a case study the paper indicates the difficulties and challenges experienced by emerging markets in fostering talent development for the sustainability of their local economies.

This paper finds that, as an emerging market, Macao has to solve and overcome its institutional deficiencies (namely, by the establishment of both a professional registration regime and the means to gather metadata to enable predictions of the talents needed for the local economy and their potential scale) so as to please stakeholders. Only then can it truly introduce talent development schemes and programs.

There have been very few studies on Macao’s talent development initiative. This paper tries to fill this gap in the existing understanding of talent development.