Severo Portela
Out of the blue, or at least through an unannounced decision made quietly and carefully, Chui Sai On changed the policy of making any MSAR Chief Executive official visit a small scale national embassy, with one or two policy Secretaries (who are equivalent to portfolio ministers) high-ranking civil servants, and a lot of business and corporate officials and the relevant “impresarios.”
We have to admit that the habit was more than justified within the Special Administrative Region’s constitutional framework, on grounds of the Basic Law’s relevant provisions that completely limit foreign relations to the Central Government. As a matter of fact, China gave MSAR a special role in the Portuguese-speaking countries, so much so that direct contact between Macau and Portugal and the other Lusophone countries would always be the highlight of the agenda of the year…not yearly, indeed. Chui, and his predecessor, made sure they were followed by substantive delegations whenever abroad…within the special role circle: Portugal, Brazil and Portuguese-speaking Africa. It used to be like this.
Chui was the first to make the reading of the “zeitgeist” and adjust the MSAR Executive to the new realities of cooperation with the countries within the special role circle, and pardon us for repeating it. Now that we know something about Chui’s main talking points during his high-profile meetings with Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Prime-Minister António Costa and the Macau-Portugal Joint Committee, that was co-presided by Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva, the decision to leave behind his Secretary for the areas of education and culture and related entourage looks a bit puzzling… since the strengthening of the cooperation between the two sides happens to be around areas like Portuguese language teaching, education and culture. Now we also know that, contrary to the old spin, the economy is no longer the hard currency for cooperation, making the absence of the Secretary for Finance, Lionel Leong, perfectly understandable, as well as the usual business scions. It is pure speculation, but we would heavily underline the silent treatment Chui gave to the idea of an IPIM (Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute) office in Lisbon, Portugal.
The thing is… Mainland China’s corporate investment in Portugal is up to a quantitative and qualitative level which dwarfs the importance of Macau in the equation of Lisbon-Beijing. And the trend seems to be growing and expanding into other areas of the Portuguese economy which is resulting in some small-size or fully fuzzy brand of projects made in Macau feel risible and unwelcome.
Now we have to address the consequences of this reality of heavy and direct Chinese investment in Portugal, and one comes immediately from the fact, or the other way around, that Macau has a one and only policy persona where Chui takes care of the tools- education, culture- of the bilateral cooperation between Portugal and Macau. And all three sides, China, Macau and Portugal, have come together at the Forum for Economic Co-operation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries. Portuguese’s Prime-Minister will be present at the 5th Ministerial Conference with some “goods” to show: the web summit in Lisbon.
PS. One final note to worry about is the excessive vigilance, persecution-cum-hacker raid the New Democrats claim to be receiving. Anyway, the New Macau Association has put up an open media vote to select what they take as “Civil Nicknames” for the panda cubs born in Taipa. The winners are Tam Tam and Wu Wu. Together the Chinese names mean corruption. Severo Portela
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