Muted handover set for Macau

Muted handover set for Macau

BEIJING (AFP): China will mark Macau's return to Chinese rule here with a scaled down version of the celebrations for the Hong Kong handover in 1997, despite saying the historic event is just as important.

"I agree the scale of celebrations for Macau is not as grand as Hong Kong's handover," Liang Guihe, a spokesman for the government-linked All-China Journalists Association, told a press briefing on Tuesday.

The Portuguese colony, which survives on the gambling industry, holds little economic value for the mainland. In the 1970s China even turned down an offer from Portugal to take back the peninsula lying in the very south of the vast mainland.

But in the run-up to the handover at midnight Sunday, Dec. 19, China has ran numerous propaganda-laced dramas and television commercials to boost patriotism.