Macau (/məˈkaʊ/ (About this soundlisten); 澳門, Cantonese: [ōu.mǔːn]; Portuguese: [mɐˈkaw]), also spelled Macao and officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (Chinese: 中華人民共和國澳門特別行政區), is a city and special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a population of about 680,000[8] and an area of 32.9 km2 (12.7 sq mi), it is the most densely populated region in the world.
Macau is a former colony of the Portuguese Empire, after Ming China leased the territory as a trading post in 1557. Portugal paid an annual rent and administered the territory under Chinese sovereignty until 1887, when it gained perpetual colonial rights in the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking. The colony remained under Portuguese rule until 1999, when it was transferred to China. Macau is a special administrative region of China, which maintains separate governing and economic systems from those of mainland China under the principle of “one country, two systems”.[9] The unique blend of Portuguese and Chinese architecture in the city’s Historic Centre led to its inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2005.[10]
Originally a sparsely populated collection of coastal islands,[11] the territory has become a major resort city and a top destination for gambling tourism, with a gambling industry seven times larger than that of Las Vegas.[12] The city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, and its GDP per capita by purchasing power parity is one of the highest in the world; however, income inequality remains high.[13][14] It has a very high Human Development Index, as calculated by the Macau government,[7] and the fourth-highest life expectancy in the world.[15] The territory is highly urbanized; two-thirds of the total land area is built on reclaimed land (land reclaimed from the sea).[16]
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