Patricia Cheong is a busy woman. As well as owning marketing consultancy MM Marketing, which was established in 1994, she also manages a number of real-estate portfolios and is the sole distributor of high-end Italian jewelry brand Damiani.
A mother of two sons, Cheong describes herself as a person with drive, who likes challenges and enjoys living in Macau. She has made it through a combination of luck, ambition and fearlessness, she says.
The daughter of two teachers, she was born in Hainan and came to Macau in 1980 aged 10 when China opened, and soon had to start working to help the family. She kept studying and left the East Asia University with a degree in Business Administration and is today an influential businesswomen.

New government

“I talk to a lot of investors, local and foreign, and everyone asks me what Macau will be like. We need proper regulations and laws, if we don’t all business will be affected. Property developers worry about the lack of regulations concerning what can and cannot be built. Foreign investments will not do anything in the grey areas,’’ she says.
Another problem she encounters daily, are businesses being set up and not getting a license. “I cannot help because I don’t know the rules. If you have a good business idea, and you respect the regulations, you should be able to open,’’ she says.
In the wake of the Ao Man Long scandal a lot of expectations have been built, and Cheong feels the government is not doing enough: “I know the government consulted some foreign companies about Macau’s development, but the conclusions of the studies were not executed,’’ she says.
For Cheong, Macau’s government is very conservative towards new proposals, and if it wants to diversify the economy it has to be open and bold: “What do I tell people who ask me what they should do? Wait for the new government”.

One man rule no answer

The new government needs to rebuild confidence through transparency and professionalism says Cheong and more should be done to empower the assembly,increasing the number of seats and allowing more directly-elected deputies. The relationship between government and the assembly also needs to be better, as they should work together, she says.
“And of course, the next chief executive should be a person with a vision, clean, not necessarily someone with all the experience, but someone who knows how to use other people, other talents. He should have a very good relationship with the central government, but I think his personality is more important than anything else. He needs a good team too and must believe in his staff. I disagree that this should be one man government,’’ says Cheong.
In the last elections, Cheong supported Angela Leong’s candidacy for the assembly and rumor has it she would also like to enter politics.
“I have thought about it and, if I was invited, I would consider, but so far, that has not happened. I am open, because I believe people should be more active,’’ she says.
If Cheong were a candidate, she would like to build a foundation to let commercial activities flourish: “That would be my priority.’’
Cheong believes labour policy should be handled better, with a long or medium term plan, working with foreign investors, universities and syndicates.
“Macau is very small, we need imported labour. These policies do not work, the investors are not happy, the imported workers are not happy and local workers are not happy”. Cheong adds that the labour issue cannot be resolved without analysis.
“We have to think about what we need. Qualified bartenders for instance, we never had that kind of demand. Of course we can train local people, but someone who has been doing this for years, will do it better. We are an entertainment city, we need quality bartenders”.

Not just slogans

She would also invest in diversifying Macau and realises that the city needs support from Beijing and needs to co-operate across the Pearl River Delta.
“Macau could be a world class tourism city. We could have educational institutes, theme parks, more quality retail, high end restaurants, a wine center. Why not the biggest wine cellar in Asia, that is currently in Hong Kong? Why not in Macau? We have to think about everything that could be related to fun. People we can draw are special, and high end too,’’ she says.Cheong feels everyone in Macau is a bit lost because of the pace of change over the past few years: “If the current government can provide a vision, then the next government can follow, and all the actions will be focused on a goal. We need to plan, define what we want to do. We need to hear something that we believe is not just slogans”, she says.

by Paulo A. Azevedo and Marta Curto