evidence: For several centuries until the last days of 1999, Macau has been effectively separated from China, and connected to Portugal, but as an autonomous entity. It has had many identities: a commercial outpost, a colony with special capacities, a territory artificially lumped together with other Portuguese possessions in Asia, a territory leased from China, a territory offered by China, and, ultimately, a "territory under (transitional) Portuguese Administration". Now Macau is a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (PRC) enjoying a "high degree of autonomy"1 as agreed in a bilateral international agreement and then detailed in a "para-constitution", the Macau Basic Law. [...] First of all, Macau is Chinese territory, and the government of the People's Republic of China has resumed the exercise of sovereignty over it. Sovereignty now resides solely in the Chinese state, both in its title and in its exercise,111 and the form of the autonomous entity is that of a special administrative region while the legal domestic document is a basic law enacted by the central authorities and not by the autonomous entity. Under such a framework, it is not possible for Macau to achieve formal federated status, even less for it to win independence.