The Macau Special Administrative Region of China is a small Cantonese-speaking community. Like many other Chinese-speaking communities, educational language policy attempts to preserve Cantonese and, at the same time, implement Putonghua and English as instructional languages. Census figures suggest that policy may be affecting Cantonese vitality, especially among school-aged speakers.
Since the handover of sovereignty from a Portuguese colonial administration to Chinese administration in December of 1999, Macau has thrived as a ‘Special Administrative Region’ (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Much of the small territory’s economic success of the past two decades relies upon the development of the world’s largest casino gaming economy in a way that national (i.e. PRC) and international interests can be effectively balanced against local interests. Cantonese, Putonghua and English in many ways respectively represent the competition between local, national and international interests in education, a domain where each language is either taught as a compulsory school subject or used as a medium of instruction (MOI). In this way, the Macau experience of language policy — where a local variety of Chinese must compete with the national variety Putonghua and the international language of English — is reflective of the experience of other ‘overseas Chinese communities’ (e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.) as well as PRC communities where local varieties of Chinese were once dominant. And the added importance of Portuguese as an official language of the territory creates unique challenges for balancing the demands of multilingualism. A careful analysis of language trends recorded in the Macau Census suggests that, while multilingualism is increasingly reported, Cantonese has declined as both an MOI and as a ‘usual language’ within the territory, especially among school-aged children. Further analysis of educational language policy documents suggests that the Macau SAR government recognises the need to implement measures that will protect Cantonese as Macau’s primary language, but, at the same time, has also implemented policies that threaten the predominance of Cantonese within the territory. Finally, the recent Macau experience is suggestive of how policies in other larger Chinese cities will affect retention of local varieties of Chinese.
