Jiancheng Incident (捷成事件), also known as the May 29 Incident (5·29 事件), was a large-scale popular movement that began on 28 May 1922 in Portuguese Macau. On 29 May, the day after the incident that served as its fuse, police and the public clashed in front of the Pakngantong Police Station (白眼塘警署) built on the site of the Jiancheng Theatre (捷成戲院) in Pakngantong (白眼塘, Portuguese name Bairro da Caldeira), and the names "Jiancheng Incident" and "May 29 Incident" derive from this. Because Portuguese police fired indiscriminately at Chinese workers during the clash, it is also called the Incident of the Portuguese Police Slaughter of Chinese Workers (葡警屠殺華工事件).
As a result of the incident, about 200 people were killed or injured. The police station that caused the trouble was dismantled. The population temporarily fell by about 70% because of the incident, and Macau fell into desolation. The labour movement in Macau also suffered a serious setback.
Background
In the early twentieth century, Portugal and China, which had each established a republic in succession, continued to dispute the status and sovereignty of the colony of Macau. At the time, the voices of the people in China demanding the recovery of Macau's sovereignty were also growing steadily, but Portugal still insisted on the boundaries that had been set when the treaties were concluded in the late Qing period. Sino-Portuguese negotiations repeatedly failed to reach agreement, and relations between the two countries deteriorated. In addition, when the Portuguese colonial government unilaterally carried out land reclamation in Macau and the Portuguese navy shelled Chinese troops, relations between the two countries became even more tense.
Cause
On 28 May 1922, an African Portuguese soldier harassed a Chinese woman on the New Marginal Road (新馬路, Portuguese name Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro), provoking the anger of passersby, and he was beaten on the spot; as several people joined in, the scuffle escalated into a fight. Portuguese colonial police arrived at the scene and restored order, but on the pretext of disturbing public order they arrested three Chinese workers who had joined the fight. When the citizens of Macau heard of this, they became discontented.
Course of Events
On the morning of 28 May, labour organisations including the Macau United General Labour Union (澳門聯合總工會), the Six Groups (6團), and the Gong Qin Oi Association (工親愛會) expressed their intention to seek bail for the arrested workers at the Kong Nam Tea House (江南茶樓), and after deliberation they sent representatives to the Pakngantong Police Station on the site of the former Jiancheng Theatre. More than ten thousand citizens and workers surrounded the police station and supported the representatives through the night. In response, the colonial authorities sent African troops to assist the Portuguese police.
Early on the morning of 29 May, the police asked the crowd gathered to change the police station's shift to disperse, but the crowd refused. The soldiers and police suppressed the people by shooting, killing 70 and wounding more than 130. After the incident, a rumour circulated that the authorities loaded the bodies found at the scene onto boats and threw them into the sea.
The armed suppression once again provoked the discontent of the citizens, and the workers protested with a strike across all of Macau, a shutdown of shops, and school suspensions. In addition, more than 70,000 citizens fled to the Chinese mainland, and at that time Macau was turned into an almost dead city.
On 1 June, the Portuguese colonial government issued an order for all workers to return to work immediately and dissolved 68 labour unions that had led the strike.
After the incident was reported in mainland China, it caused an enormous sensation. On 1 June, in Guangzhou city, more than ten thousand people spontaneously held a national rally against Portugal and demanded that the Chinese government recover Macau's sovereignty as soon as possible. Afterwards, the Chinese Labour Union Secretariat, together with nine other organisations, distributed leaflets to all Chinese protesting against the Portuguese colonial government. The leaflets carried the following sentences:
Such barbaric assaults by Portuguese officials treat the Chinese as if they were mole crickets or ants (...) If we regard this merely as an incident in Guangdong (廣樂) and do not wish to protest, our country will perish before long. (..) This matter concerns the security of the nation and the honour of the workers, and everyone must unite and rise up to fight.
On 2 June, the Macau labour unions sent two representatives to Sun Yat-sen in Guangzhou and to Wu Tingfang, who was then Minister of Foreign Affairs, and demanded that a cruiser be sent to Macau to protest to the Portuguese colonial government. This demand was accepted, and on 4 June the Chinese government's three-point demands were submitted to the Portuguese consul in Guangzhou:
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Withdraw all African troops from Macau
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Compensate the Chinese who were injured
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Permanently ban opium and gambling in Macau
Three days later, the Portuguese consul in Guangzhou replied that the shooting suppression was an internal matter of Macau, that the Chinese government could not interfere, and that the Portuguese colonial government had no obligation to compensate the Chinese who had been killed. On 10 June, the Portuguese consul in Guangzhou again received a document from the Chinese government containing an apology from the Portuguese colonial government, strict punishment of the soldiers and police who fired, and an undertaking to implement the three demands submitted earlier. However, a few days later Chen Jiongming (陳炯明), then governor of Guangdong Province, launched the 6.16 Incident (六一六事變), an internal rebellion, and the Nationalist government in Guangdong was forced to adjust its troops. Naturally, the pressure on the Portuguese colonial government weakened, and the attention of the people, which had been focused on the Jiancheng Incident, turned elsewhere, so the Portuguese colonial government was able to evade responsibility for the Jiancheng Incident for a time.
In November of the same year, the Portuguese colonial government and the workers' representatives resumed negotiations, and the incident was brought to a close after the government agreed to pay consolation money to the injured workers and to restore the dissolved labour unions.
Impact
After the incident, the Portuguese colonial government banned private discussion of the incident and began to control popular activities. During the incident, citizens of Macau fled in large numbers to the Chinese mainland, and the population of Macau fell from 100,000 to about 20,000. Most of the citizens who had fled gradually returned to Macau over the following years, but the labour movement in Macau stagnated for more than twenty years after the incident. The Pakngantong Police Station was dismantled not long after the incident.
The Portuguese colonial government continued land reclamation in the Qingzhou (青洲) area of Macau, and the firecracker factories and shipyards were relocated to Qingzhou, so that the northern part of Macau became an industrial area. Later, in the 1950s, the firecracker factories and shipyards were moved again to Taipa and Coloane in southern Macau.
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