Confucian wisdom teaches that the best closed door is the one that can be left open. And Macau is an example. The cycle of more than four centuries of Portuguese administration having ended in 1999, the government of the small territory that integrates the Greater Bay in the Delta of the Rio das Pérolas, where some of the largest innovation and technology companies in the world live, reminds Portugal of the centrality of Macau in our relations with China and the latter with the Portuguese-speaking world.
At the head of the largest delegation ever, the Macau Chief Executive arrives in Lisbon, on what is, by choice, his first trip abroad. With Ho Iat Seng – in office for just over three years, but conditioned by the restrictions of the pandemic – come more than 50 businessmen who believe in the importance of the Portuguese language and culture as a differentiating factor and a competitive advantage for Macau in relation to other regions from China.
It is not by chance that the Macau press headlines “Bringing Portugal back”, when the 36th anniversary of the signing of the Luso-Chinese Joint Declaration is celebrated, the international treaty that establishes for 50 years the terms of the commitment to maintain the legal framework of Portuguese matrix, ensuring the cultural uniqueness as well as the fundamental rights and freedoms of its citizens, Portuguese as the second official language, and giving BNU (100% of Caixa Geral de Depósitos) the role of issuing bank for the local currency, the pataca.
Midway through the term of that commitment, the parties never made use of the claims book. In addition, Macau, at one of the vertices of the Greater Bay, together with Hong Kong and nine other cities in the province of Guangdong (Guangdong), is part of the “New Silk Roads” project, the audacious plan for economic expansion, inspired by the ancient caravans of goods between Europe and Asia, which Beijing has made its highest foreign trade priority: a colossal network of infrastructure and connections, of transport and exchange that connect China more with the rest of the world. At the same time, and recognizing Macau’s vocation as a tourism and leisure hub, Beijing gives that territory a central role as a platform for exchange between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, an objective that reveals a clear economic and geopolitical dimension, given the Chinese interests in Brazil and, above all, in Portuguese-speaking Africa.
Yes, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Chinese position on the conflict cooled relations between Brussels and Beijing. But the European Union, which has never been very fast, just needs to be smarter. Second largest global economy, with a growing influence and a strong assertion in the strategic and military plans, China is increasingly a global player with the capacity not only to influence the evolution of war, but above all to play a central role in the design of new political, economic and strategic contours of the post-conflict world. In this context, it is essential not to forget that China has already overtaken the United States as the European Union’s number one trading partner. And, for our part, despite the growing tendency of Portuguese diplomacy to follow the guidelines of Brussels, Macau should continue to mark the Portuguese uniqueness and a unique relationship that began in 1516. Yes, we are allies of the United States, but friends of China, with whom we maintain a relationship of trust founded on centuries of coexistence. As for business relationships, we only have to remind them of their own proverb: If the wind blows from one direction, the tree grows leaning.
General Secretary of the Global Media Group*
