Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

I am greatly honoured at being received in the Beijing University for Foreign Studies. I would thus express my deepest thanks for the amiable invitation addressed by Chancellor Peng Long.

This was the first University for Foreign Studies in China and it early witnessed the importance of other languages and cultures. One of this Academy’s traditions has anyway been the training of Chinese Ambassadors. More recently, however, it has played a dynamic role in the dissemination of Portugal in China.

Being trained as an economist, I am by heart a Portuguese. And it is thus with great pride and emotion that I speak to you about my country. This scenario could not be more appropriate: the magnificent library of this prestigious university. I firmly believe that the future of any nation is based on education and wisdom. Today I want to better introduce you to Portugal.

Portugal, which gave so many worlds to the World, is a country about which published information is not always effective or trustworthy.

Portugal has an eight century history that, at many times, was intertwined with world History.

Portugal was a pioneer in globalization, approaching and disseminating cultures, both in the West and in the East. The 1580 Portuguese Chinese dictionary, of which I had the honour to offer a facsimile to the Egregious Chancellor, is proof of this.

Other vestiges of this impact are nowadays recognized by UNESCO. There are 24 monuments with Portuguese origin - built outside national territory – classified as World Heritage. This presence is spread over three continents: America, Africa and Asia, including China, with the Macau historic centre.

UNESCO also classified “Fado” – our traditional song – as an intangible World Heritage, recognizing the relevance of this Portuguese cultural display and that of our language.

Portuguese was used for centuries as the lingua franca in Africa and Asia. Nowadays, Portuguese is the official language of nearly 250 million people, in eight countries spread in four continents. Portuguese is one of the idioms with greater worldwide expansion. It is also the most spoken language in the southern hemisphere and one of the most used in the Internet and, above all, in the social networks. Simultaneously, it is an official language in several international organizations, including the European Union, the African Union and the Iberian American Community.

It is thus unsurprising but with great gladness that I view the interest that the Portuguese language arises in China and the very high level of employability guaranteed by its knowledge.

A feature that the Portuguese always knew how to keep, throughout all these centuries of History, was the wish for progress. We are thus a country that does not hanker for the past, but which faces the future with confidence and ambition.

In the last three years Portugal, as you are possibly aware, went through a very demanding period. The response was collective and given with an enormous sense of responsibility. Portugal carried out great efforts in order to balance its public accounts and in materializing structural reforms, aiming to increase the economy’s competitiveness. Results have been revealed as very positive, and the country continues placing a firm stake on the building of a healthy, dynamic and competitive economy, more than ever comprised in the global economy.

Portuguese economy is an open economy, with a business environment promoting entrepreneurial activity and foreign investment. It has companies which have excellent conditions to establish partnerships with Chinese companies to enter third markets, in Africa or Latin America. In addition, the Country has available both human resources and physical and technological infrastructures of the highest quality.

In latter years, Portugal was the destination of important foreign investments, namely Chinese. Simultaneously, the external balance of payments achieved a positive result, with an outstanding growth in exports. Our companies were able to diversify markets and to invest in differentiation, based on quality and innovation, incorporating new dimensions of value.

Portugal’s privileged geographic location is a further competitive advantage. The dimension of the Portuguese sea provides us with the largest exclusive economic area in the European Union. Its geo-strategic weight arises from the fact that it is a point of confluence amongst three continents, and to its enjoying particularly good relations with Africa, the Mediterranean and the Americas.

With the expansion of the Panama Canal and the importance of the Country’s deep water port in Sines, Portugal will, in its turn, assume a new centrality, bringing forward its nearness to Asia.

In the last few years, we have achieved new levels of competitiveness in several scientific and technological areas, many of them with a global reach. The prepaid mobile telephone card and the automatic toll payment system were born in Portugal. Investments in new information technologies brought Portugal to European leadership in the quality of online public services.

Regarding science and innovation structures, Portugal has today centres of excellence in areas of large potential growth, such as nanotechnology, mobile telecommunications, medical sciences or biotechnology. In these work both Portuguese graduated in our universities and many foreign citizens that chose Portugal to pursue their research.

Portuguese scientific production is thus inserted in the most prestigious global knowledge networks. Cooperation between Portuguese and foreign universities is nowadays very intense, including with Chinese universities. In this State Visit to China I am accompanied by Chancellors of Portuguese universities.

Portugal has been heavily investing in the qualification of human resources. The number of graduates has grown by five times in the last twenty years.

Very recently, the country has recorded one of the highest growths at European level in the number of doctorate degrees. As I stated just now, I believe in the fundamental value of education as a path towards progress. For this reason, I believe in an ambitious future for my country.

Portuguese qualified staff are recognized and welcomed abroad. I have had the occasion to view proof of this throughout the world. Two days ago, in Shanghai, in a meeting I held with the new Portuguese community, I met many talented and enterprising young executives who live and successfully work there.

Several Portuguese have been called upon to fulfil high office in international institutions. The current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or the President of the European Commission are both Portuguese, which is significant of the prestige the Country enjoys.

Since its adhesion to the European Union, Portugal has assumed a very active role in the deepening of the European project, the most ambitious integration experiment in history. The most recent instance of this standing was the signature, in Lisbon, of the treaty that carries the name of our capital city. It was a founder member of the Euro zone, the central component of European integration, in parallel with the single European market with 500 million consumers. Portugal believes in a united Europe.

Externally, Portugal equally defines itself by the special relationship it maintains with the Portuguese Official Language African Countries. The friendly relations that Portugal built with the new countries emerging from the Portuguese decolonization process in the seventies are a motive of great pride.

The founding of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries, in 1996, which was joined by Brazil and later by East Timor, was a confirmation that this was a community of affection, linked by a language, by a History and by common values, that wished to assume the formal commitment to strengthen cooperation amongst its members.

In Latin America, Portugal maintains, apart from its special relations with Brazil, dynamism of frequent contacts within the framework of the Iberian American Community. More recently, Portugal’s approach to the Pacific Alliance, as an observer country, is revealing of the interest we have in this region.

In the North Atlantic, our relations with the United States and Canada are longstanding and enjoy great proximity. I visited these two countries in the past month of March, our partners in the Atlantic Alliance, where an important and dynamic Portuguese community work and live.

In the most relevant worldwide stage – the United Nations – Portugal is recognized by its capability to reach consensus and to build bridges between countries and cultures. This facet of universality embodies a capital of sympathy that very probably will have been the reason for our successful candidacies to the Security Council.

Today, I return to China. The first contacts amongst our peoples go back five centuries. The fascination that China raised with the Portuguese was immediate. Reports of a sophisticated and unique civilization passed on in many documents caused much curiosity and was greatly entertaining. There are several references to China in the Portuguese great epic, The “Lusíadas”, by Luis de Camões.

I believe that Portugal and China have known how to value, in a logic of present and future, the deep and multi-secular bonds of friendship and cooperation that bring us together. This I ascertained during my mandates as Prime Minister as well as now, as President of the Republic of Portugal.

This is a particularly felicitous year, since the 35 years of the re-establishment of Luso-Chinese diplomatic relations are being celebrated, as well as the 15th anniversary of the Macau Special Administrative region, major symbol of our friendship. The exemplary negotiation that Portugal and China were able to carry out, with mutual dignity and respect, culminated with the Joint Declaration that, representing Portugal, I had the honour to sign in the presence of the great leader Deng Xiaoping.

Nowadays our two countries endeavour to fully exploit the enormous potential enclosed in the Luso-Chinese Strategic Partnership, for the benefit of both our peoples. It was in this spirit that I had the honour to welcome in Portugal the State Visit of President Hu Jintao. Portugal counts on China, and China knows it can count on Portugal, both in bilateral terms as in the international context in which both countries are inserted.

What I have revealed to you concerning today’s Portugal draws the contours of a country that defines itself, after all, by continuity: the opening out to the World and the search for knowledge. Portuguese Discoveries, that left markers in the four corners of the Earth, were based on the development of science and innovative techniques and were in the genesis of the global economy of our present times.

In the past, my ancestors were pushed towards the expansion of knowledge through travel. Today, it is still the force of knowledge that continues impelling us, with an ambition in which universities assume a fundamental role.

Portuguese poet Miguel Torga wrote:

“This embrace opens in me the strength
That encompasses the world!”

This is today, as it always has been, the feeling and the attitude of the Portuguese.

It is thus also in your hands, esteemed students and professors, the strengthening of the bonds that link Portugal and China.

My retinue includes representatives of Portuguese higher education and research institutions. The interest shown by the Portuguese academic community is equally a clear indication that the deepening of relations between Portugal and China will continue to bear long standing results at the level of knowledge, of the Academy and of the entrepreneurial world.

Thank you very much.
Xié, Xié.