THE CHINESE OF MACAU A DECADE AFTER THE HANDOVER is an important contribution to the study of identity, a fundamental topic in the twenty-first as in the latter part of the twentieth century. Identity in Macau is studied not only from a local Chinese perspective but also from a Macanese viewpoint. Society, culture and religion among the Chinese of Macau - and in particular the roles played by various Macau social, cultural and religious associations - are each studied in the context of economic circumstances. Based on two years of laborious fieldwork, initially assisted by Macau University students and others, The Chinese of Macau benefits from and re-actualizes Jean Berlie's previous research, published by Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, as Macau 2000. Coinciding with Macau's change in status to become a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, and providing a snapshot of Macau Society at this significant point in Macau's history, Macau 2000, was received with great interest. The joint study of society and economy is a key point of both these complementary studies. Indeed, in Berlie's view, the current world economic crisis will be solved only when economists understand the interplay between these factors. Geoffrey C. Gunn, Professor of International Relations at Nagasaki University, has contributed a foreword and Tong Io Cheng, Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Macau and Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Macau, has contributed a chapter.
About the Author: JEAN A. BERLIE is a researcher, since 1991 based at the Centre of Asian Studies (CAS) (now re-named Centre for Humanities and Social Science (incorporating the Centre for Asian Studies), University of Hong Kong. In August 2012 he joined the Centre for Greater China Studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education as an Honorary Research Fellow. He is a member of the board of Tai Culture, Berlin (http: //www.seacom.de/taicul/tc.html). Since 1990, he has been conducting research in cooperation with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Jinan University, Guangzhou, and separately, also with the Academy of Social Science at Yunnan. Berlie's main research focus is threefold: China; Macau (funded by the Cultural Institute of Macau between 1995 and 2000 and the Macau Foundation in 2011); and Southeast Asia. His books include, among others, The Burmanization of Myanmar's Muslims (2008), East Timor Politics and Elections (2007), Islam in China (2004) and Macao 2000 (Editor) (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)