On December 7, 2024, fans of “Scream Night,” an annual fashion and entertainment event hosted by entertainment streaming platform iQIYI, flocked to Galaxy Arena, Macao’s largest indoor venue, eager to see their favorite stars.
Their arrival broke the tranquility of Cotai, an area of reclaimed land that has become an entertainment hub replete with mega casino resorts such as the Plaza Macao, the Venetian Macao and the Londoner Macao.
The same day, a 94,000-square-meter outdoor stage with a capacity of up to 80,000 started trial operations in Cotai. The first concert was held on December 28, attracting about 11,000 spectators to see stars from the Chinese mainland, Macao, Hong Kong and South Korea, including Julian Cheung, Maria Cordero and Lightsum, the Macao Daily reported on December 29.
According to the Statistics and Census Service of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), Macao generated about 2.35 billion patacas (US$290m) in revenue in the cultural performance sector in 2023, up 214.6 percent year-on-year. In November 2024, the regional government announced it would develop Macao into a cultural hub.
“Before Macao’s return, not so many people here were willing to pay for a performance, but now tickets usually sell out in an hour,” Agnes Lam Lok Fong, director of the Center for Macao Studies, the University of Macau told NewsChina. Fong, also an elected member of the SAR’s 6th Legislative Council, added that many ticket buyers are locals who now complain online about how difficult it is to get a ticket to a good show.
In addition to contemporary culture and arts, history has become another way for Macao to redefine its cultural identity, which features the meeting and mix of East and West, ancient and modern.
In a radio program on Macao’s public broadcaster TDM, Lou Kit Long, CEO of entertainment company StarMac Entertainment, said that Macao hosts on average three to five concerts a week now.
In November 2024, Macao hosted nearly 30 concerts. Our reporter found that at its busiest, it staged seven concerts in just one weekend, according to online lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu.
Two concerts by veteran Chinese singer Dao Lang on November 8-9 were hot tickets, with more than 30,000 selling out in nine seconds. The Macao Government Tourism Office and Cultural Affairs Bureau (CAB) for the first time in 25 years made a 34-second trailer to promote the concert. Across hotels and shopping malls, Dao Lang’s songs played on a loop with huge LED screens advertising his shows. Many fans came from the US, New Zealand and Japan. The SAR made a contingency plan to provide accommodation for nearly 1,000 fans who could not find a room as all hotels booked out.
“Macao’s loosening censorship, smooth traffic and splendid facilities, as well as plentiful investments and experienced operation from multinational performing companies, makes it an ideal place to hold concerts,” Yao Feng, a former deputy director at CAB and a University of Macau professor, told NewsChina.
In 2023, concerts in Macao attracted about 1 million visits, generating a box-office revenue of 1.1 billion patacas (US$140m), with over 2,000 large-scale performances of at least 5,000 spectators each. More than 10,000 cultural and arts events attracted nearly 20 million visits, the CAB said in June 2024.
In line with the Development Plan for Appropriate Economic Diversification of the Macao SAR (2024-2028) issued by the SAR government in November, policies such as ticket tax exemption, arrangements to smooth out logistics for large performances and easier access to ticket sales have been fleshed out.
In addition to concerts, the popularity of dance shows, symphonies, exhibitions and traditional and modern operas has grown notably.
In 1999, there were only 602 performances and 111 exhibitions in Macao. In 2023, there were 4,561 performances and 4,086 exhibitions, according to Macao’s statistics authority. They include big international cultural events such as the Arts and Cultural Festival between China and Portuguese Speaking Countries that started in 2018, and the Macao International Comedy Festival and the Macao International Children’s Arts Festival, both starting in 2024.
The growing revenues of performing arts are just part of the holistic plan by the Macao government to boost local culture. According to Yao, social institutions that manage residential communities have been given local government funding to provide non-profit performances such as ticket-free street arts.
“Apart from the substantive gains, the culture industry creates a good cultural atmosphere, improves personal cultivation and has given the city a facelift,” Lin Guangzhi, director with the Institute for Social and Cultural Research, Macau University of Science and Technology, told NewsChina.
On December 15, 2024, a groundbreaking show featured eight intangible cultural heritage performances such as Tuvan throat singing, or khoomei, and eight modern technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) imaging, programmed robotic arms and bionic flying vehicles.
Named Macao 2049, the show is directed by Zhang Yimou and was developed with Pansy Ho Chiu-king, chairperson and executive director of MGM China Holdings.
The venue, which opened in 2018, is hailed as Asia’s first “dynamic theater” as part of the MGM resort, features 2,000 ergonomic seats, a 900-squaremeter 4k LED screen and immersive audio technology. With an investment of US$250 million, it is a bold attempt by MGM China to diversify its portfolio.
Macao is the only place in China where gambling is legal. In 2006, four years after casino magnate Stanley Ho Hung-sun’s (1921-2020) monopoly on the gambling business in the SAR was broken, Macao overtook Las Vegas as the world’s top gambling city in terms of revenue, according to Macao official data. Combined revenue from 22 casinos in Macao grossed 56.2 billion patacas (US$7.2b) in 2006, about US$600 million more than the Las Vegas Strip.
However, despite its vibrant growth, the dominance of the casino industry in Macao was cause for concern.
During the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010), China’s central government pushed Macao to adopt a multi-structured developmental model, and in the next Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), the SAR government established funds designated for Macao’s cultural industry. Nevertheless, from 2010 to 2019, gambling, which accounted for 80.1 percent of government revenue in 2019, remained the pillar industry in terms of gross revenues.
But a year later, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, casino revenue had plunged by 79.4 percent to no more than 61 billion patacas (US$7.6b). Although there was a minor recovery in 2021 when revenue climbed to 30 percent of that in 2019, it slid in 2022 to 46.2 billion patacas (US$5.8b).
“During the first year of the pandemic, the nearly 60 percent slump in Macao’s GDP was the biggest in the world. Also in that year, a consensus was reached that the over-dependence on gaming was unsustainable,” Lam said.
On June 26, 2022, when the licenses of the big six casino owners – SJM Holdings, Galaxy Entertainment, Wynn Macao, MGM China, Melco Resorts and Sands China – were up for renewal, the SAR government enacted an amended law titled the Legal Framework for the Operations of Casino Games of Fortune to reregulate the market.
According to the revision, casino companies should finance local cultural, social, economic, scientific, technological and philanthropic events every year with a maximum of 2 percent of their gross revenue.
The big six operators have diversified their investments into museums, community arts, city renovation and cultural exploration.
On November 2, 2024, MGM China in cooperation with Beijing-headquartered Poly Culture Group opened the nearly 2,000-square-meter Poly MGM Museum with its first exhibition themed on China’s Maritime Silk Road. The exhibition, which runs through September 2025, displays 228 priceless cultural relics, including four bronze heads of an ox, tiger, monkey and pig that used to adorn Beijing’s Old Summer Palace. According to the China Daily, the museum may replace the animal head statues with replicas in January 2025.
The bronzes, which depicted the heads of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, were looted when the Old Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, was destroyed in 1860 by British and French troops. Today, along with the bronzes on display in Macao, the rat, rabbit and horse bronzes have been returned to the Chinese mainland. The pig and horse bronzes were bought in 2003 and 2007 and donated to the State in 2003 and 2019 by Stanley Ho.
In remarks at the opening of the exhibition, Stanley Ho’s daughter Ho Chiuking said that as the city’s new landmark building for culture and tourism, the museum will be dedicated to bridging China with the rest of the world through cultural and art exchanges.
Wynn Macao kicked off its first community revitalization project by introducing art installations, cultural events and a night market at the Rua de Felicidade Pedestrian Zone in September 2023, according to a company press release. Meanwhile, Melco Resorts backed the local government by engaging in the restoration of Piers 23 and 25 to improve the Inner Harbor area.
“This support from the casino industry is essential to the SAR government to develop the local cultural industry, which was small, weak and fragmented,” Lin told NewsChina.
In a November interview with China News Service, Wu Zhiliang, president of the board of directors of the Macao Foundation, said that the higher education rate in Macao before its return in 1999 was only 5.5 percent.
It was not until 1981 that the first university, the University of Macau, formerly known as the University of East Asia, was established, when its founders Wong King Keung, Edward Woo Pak Hay and Peter Eng Yuk Lun were granted a land lease by the then government.
So close to Hong Kong, only 60 kilometers across the South China Sea, Macao saw investors and talent head to Hong Kong for better opportunities, Professor Yao Feng told NewsChina.
“We all know singer Jenny Tseng and actress Michelle Reis are from Macao. But without being able to fully develop their talent, both moved to Hong Kong,” Yao said, adding that because of Macao’s underdevelopment, many Hong Kong people believed Macao was nothing but a recreation spot that lacked traditional cultural heritage.
Yao does not buy into this view. He quoted the late Chinese scholar Ji Xianlin (1911-2009) and Japanese literary figure Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023) to argue that Macao has a more profound culture than Hongkongers believed. Ji was a polyglot who studied ancient Indian languages and literature in Germany and Ikeda was a Buddhist philosopher, educator and poet.
According to Ji, Macao was where the second wave of cultural exchange between China and the Western world commenced in the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Ikeda said during a visit to Macao in the 1990s that it was a land of inclusiveness, and with its cultural diversification, shed light like a beacon, bringing brightness and hope to a world troubled by unrest.
From 1553 on, Macao was the forefront of visiting Catholic missionaries including Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1592-1666) and Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688) who introduced Western sciences and philosophies to East Asia.
“Macao was also the cradle of revolutionary theories developed by Sun Yatsen (1866-1925), a pioneer of the Chinese revolution,” Yao told NewsChina, highlighting the SAR’s significant role in China’s progress to modernity.
According to Lam, people in Macao were not so confident in their culture until its return. In 2005, the Historic Center of Macao was listed as China’s 31st World Heritage Site, which hosts temples, churches and monuments with hundreds of years of history and both traditional Chinese and Western architectural designs. It is a typical testimony of early East-West interaction. As the UNESCO website says, “It bears witness to one of the earliest and longest-lasting encounters between China and the West, based on the vibrancy of international trade.”
“Once we realized our culture’s awesome role, it was easier to push forward its development,” Lam told NewsChina, explaining that Macao people rediscovered the history and culture of Macao during the process of applying for world heritage site status.
In 2023, the culture industry in Macao generated more than 8.7 billion patacas (US$1.1b) in revenue, up 47.9 percent year-on-year, the DSEC revealed in November 2024.
“Today, I have a sense that a golden age of Macao is on the horizon,” Lam said.
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