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The year 1912 marked the founding of the Republic of China. Yuan Shikai (袁世凱) accelerated his power expansion when he succeeded Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) as the Provisional President. Revolutionaries including Zhu Zhixin (朱執信) and Teng Keng (鄧鏗) rebelled against Yuan in the 1913 Second Revolution but failed. They then fled to Macao (Macau) to plan an uprising against Yuan and Long Jiguang (龍濟光), who was appointed by the former as the Governor of Guangdong Province (廣東) after the Second Revolution. Macao thus became a base of uprisings against Yuan and Long.

Meanwhile, the unresolved Macao’s boundary issue was a decade-spanning diplomatic controversy between China and Portuguese Macao. Disputes over Macao’s maritime boundaries emerged when the Canton Custom collided with the Portuguese Macao government in the former’s operations against smugglers and pirates in the early 20th century. China was also upset by the large-scale land reclamation projects conducted by the Portuguese Macao government in the Inner Harbour. The Republic of China and Portugal signed the Sino-Portuguese Friendship and Trade Treaty in Nanjing (南京) in 1928, which removed previous unequal provisions. However, Macao’s boundaries was still left undefined, like in the many fruitless negotiations over the issue in earlier years.

The territorial controversy over Macao triggered anti-colonisation sentiment in Guangdong and Macao that climaxed with the May 29th Incident in 1922. The incident exacerbated from a local police-civilian conflict in Macao into a Canton-Macao anti-colonisation demonstration when the Portuguese military police fired at civilians during the suppression. The Canton-Hong Kong strike broke out in 1925. Although Macao did not go on strike, the blockade imposed on it by the Canton-Hong Kong Strike Committee dealt a heavy blow to its economy.

Changes in Portuguese politics continued to influence Macao. The 5 October 1910 Revolution gave birth to the First Portuguese Republic, a regime that offered more leeway to overseas Portuguese territories. Macao thus boomed in the early 20th century. However, the First Portuguese Republic ended in a military coup on 28 May 1926 that gave rise to the Second Portuguese Republic. A decades-long dictatorship led by António de Oliveira Salazar commenced in 1932, during which he tightened the control over Macao.

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