A Tale of Two Former Colonies: Headstrong Hong Kong and Mild-Mannered Macau – The Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal

MACAU — As demonstrations plunged Hong Kong into recession, Macau continued to boom as the world’s richest casino market.

Both cities on China’s southern coast, 728 miles apart by sea, spent more than a century under European colonial rule — Macau under Portugal and Hong Kong under the UK — before being returned to Beijing in the late 01575879 s. Each was given a guarantee of semiautonomy and human-rights protections.

But …