There is a new railway that connects Macau and Guangzhou that aims to reduce travel time from the mainland, as well as the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau road bridge.
The spiritual mission helped doom the enclave's material prosperity, when the Jesuits' spreading influence finally prompted Japan to shutter itself from the world by the early 1640s. (The Dutch cut off trade from the other direction by seizing Malacca in 1641.) But over the next century the effort gave Macau a purpose, as a center of learning and a bridge to the Middle Kingdom.