One of the most crucial deliverables of Chief Executive Sam Hou Fai’s nine-day, four-nation tour of Europe is that expanding cooperation with Spanish-speaking countries has been confirmed as a strategic priority of the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR).
Addressing a reception in Madrid on Wednesday, as pointed out by Xinhua News Agency, Sam pledged to extend the functions of Macau’s role as a platform for cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries (PSCs) to Spanish-speaking countries (SSCs).
This move represents a major expansion of Macau’s traditional role as a bridge between China and the world’s nine PSCs.
Actually, one of the PSCs – Equatorial Guinea – is an SSC. The central African country, a former Spanish colony, boasts three official languages: Spanish (unsurprisingly), French and Portuguese. The latter two are not locally spoken, but both were, nevertheless, given official status in 1998 and 2010, respectively, for primarily diplomatic reasons so that the country could join the Francophone Economic and Monetary Committee of Central Africa (CEMAC) and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP).
The expansion of Macau’s platform role is aligned with the Central People’s Government’s 15th Five-Year Plan, which was passed by the National People’s Congress (NPC) last month. This national blueprint explicitly supports Macau in improving its external cooperation mechanisms and broadening its international reach.
Since its launch in August 2004, the Post has dedicated Page 12 to news and features about the Portuguese-speaking world – the only English-language daily in the world to do so. Moving with the times, we published a “Notice to Our Readers” on May 16 last year said that “starting today, our Page 12 will focus on news from Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries – this change follows recent announcements by the central and local governments regarding their intention to strengthen Macau’s commercial and cultural ties with these regions.
In an editorial on May 12 last year, headlined “Lula’s visit [to China] set to further strengthen China-Brazil, LatAm-Caribbean ties”, I agreed with Portuguese Consul-General Alexandre Leitão, who said on the sidelines of a function on May 10, 2025, marking the opening of consular services here by the Spanish-speaking Oriental Republic of Uruguay, which abuts Brazil, that Macau’s aim to strengthen its ties with the Spanish-speaking world should be seen as a natural consequence of its ongoing effort to advance the local economy’s appropriate diversification.
About 900 million people speak Spanish and Portuguese (native and non-native speakers), or around 11 percent of the global population. That’s massive. Spanish is an official language in 19 countries and one territory (Puerto Rico), Portuguese in nine countries and one territory – Macau, obviously.
I also pointed out in my editorial that “as someone who has gone through the trouble (or pleasure, depending on how you look at it) of studying both languages, I would like to point out that both are quite similar but also rather different. Both Iberian languages have around 90 percent lexical similarity so that they are mutually intelligible to a large extent. Let’s clarify what is at stake here – practical communication to facilitate trade, investment and cooperation as we are not aiming for literary greatness here”.
Macau’s then secretary for Administration and Justice André Cheong Weng Chon, who now heads the local legislature, told lawmakers in April last year that Macau and Hengqin would jointly establish a service centre for economic and trade cooperation between China and Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries, scheduled to start operating in the second half of that year.
The Service Centre for Economy and Trade between China and Portuguese/Spanish-speaking Countries got off the ground late last year as part of the second phase of construction for the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin.
The centre is supported by a one-billion-yuan (1.18 billion pataca) development fund specifically aimed at promoting trade and cooperation between China and both Lusophone and Hispanic markets.
Since early this year, the centre has been headed by Cao Jinfeng, who also serves as the deputy director of the Executive Committee of the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone.
I understand that the centre played a prominent role in Sam’s visits to Lisbon and Madrid last week, where it coordinated participation for various enterprises to help them utilise Macau’s platform strengths for “going global.” According to official reports, 61 deals of various kinds were signed by a range of businesses and other entities in Lisbon on the sidelines of Sam’s visit, while 48 were inked in Madrid.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether all of the 109 agreements will ultimately bear fruit. Well, at the end of the day, what matters is the quality of the deals, not the quantity.
Now it is high time for local universities to follow suit by supporting Macau’s expanded platform role, such as by launching Luso-Hispanic Studies degree programmes that should NOT focus on translation courses (translations are increasingly taken care of by AI, not only are they faster but often even better than those produced by human intelligence (HI) but on multidisciplinary area studies involving languages as just one of the various subjects such as history, geography, politics, economics, law, etc. Concerning translations, what we need nowadays is highly qualified staff able to edit translations. In my view, the profound knowledge of the subject at hand is more important than proficiency in the respective language. I say this as someone who passed a pretty difficult state examination in Spanish-German translation in my early 20s.
Anyhow, the advantages of Macau’s emerging “dual-platform” role are multifarious. By further strengthening Macau’s traditional ties of amity with Portugal (which pulled out all the stops for Sam’s visit, arranging meetings with the country’s top officials: the president, prime minister, speaker, and several ministers – an effort that certainly deserves praise) and setting up its new “special relationship” with Spain (which also arranged a string of meetings with senior officials such as the second deputy vice-prime minister, deputy speaker of the Senate and foreign minister), Macau has now got two important political and economic gateways through both countries – the European Union, of which both are members, and Latin America and the Caribbean as well as Africa, such as Portugal’s five former colonies there and Spain’s traditionally close relationship with North Africa and the Middle East, the Maghreb in particular.
Besides, Macau offers businesses from the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking world legal familiarity as its legal system is based on the civil law tradition, aka the Continental European law system, making it highly compatible with the legal frameworks of Spain, Portugal, its former colonies, and Spanish-speaking Latin American countries.
Moreover, Macau is a free port and low-tax economy, and it is a founding member of the World Trade Organisation (Sam met in Geneva with WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala who was full of praise of Macau’s achievements after its return to the motherland in 1999) during his European tour.
Potentially, the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone will provide additional advantages to Macau’s platform role, such as a place for professional services including arbitration and mediation, as well as medical and other kinds of scientific research.
Based on the 23-year long experience accumulated by the Macau-based Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking Countries (Macao), aka Forum Macao, I would expect the local government, the business sector, academia and professional community to rise to the occasion and use the chance of having Macau’s novel “dual platform” role, tailored by the Central People’s Government to their advantage. Beyond this, the nation as a whole must also benefit – an important aspect that locals should never neglect
Forum Macao is a multilateral intergovernmental, primarily economic and commercial cooperation mechanism launched in October 2003 by the Central People’s Government. It is an initiative, a de-facto “endowment”, presented by the central authorities to Macau so that it could play a meaningful role on the international stage, apart from its strategic goal – also chosen by Beijing – of establishing itself as a World Centre of Tourism and Leisure. This, en passant, underscores the need to upgrade English-language proficiency within the local authorities – a necessity if Macau is to meet its goal of attracting more international visitors, particularly from Southeast Asia where English serves as the lingua franca.
According to Article 13 of the Macau Basic Law, the Central People’s Government has authorised the MSAR “to conduct relevant external affairs, on its own, in accordance with this Law”.
Undoubtedly, Macau’s external affairs must be conducted in strict agreement with Beijing’s foreign policy guidelines. To suggest otherwise would be preposterous.
I have been told that the successful organisation of Sam’s European tour was largely due to the effective assistance provided by China’s embassies (and the Chinese Mission to the UN in Geneva). We in Macau should be grateful for their hard work.
Macau should do its utmost to assist the Central People’s Government in pursuing its foreign policy goals. This applies not only to the Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking world – spanning four continents – but also to Southeast Asia, the source of most of Macau’s international tourists, and the wider EU beyond the Iberian Peninsula.
I believe Macau can do much to support China’s foreign policy, working in close coordination with the Foreign Ministry in Beijing and its local Commissioner’s Office.
The Central People’s Government has rendered immense assistance to Macau since 1999; in return, the MSAR should express its gratitude by becoming more active on the external relations front, leveraging its unique historical and cultural background.
Furthermore, Forum Macao should look beyond purely economic affairs towards cultural and scientific cooperation. Enhanced synergy between the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would, I am certain, yield significant benefits for both China and the MSAR.
One last remark: I also believe that Sam’s future overseas visits should include one of the potentially most promising and most “China friendly” countries in the world – Mozambique, irrespective of its current economic woes.
The chief executive’s overseas tours should be seen not merely as economic missions, but as “goodwill visits” to promote the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ principle – the fundamental raison d’être behind the successful development of the MSAR.
Political and economic interests are inherently intertwined – be it at the international, national, or local level – and we must, realistically, accept this fact.
– Harald Brüning
