CGTN Europe spoke to former Portuguese Finance Minister Jorge Braga de Macedo about what the future holds for economic cooperation between China and Portugal.
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00:00Macau was a Portuguese colony for more than 400 years before it was returned to China in 1999.
00:07Jorge Braga de Macedo is a former Portuguese finance minister. He spoke to us about Macau's booming economy.
00:13Gambling comes to mind, very much so, yet a comparison from the 19th century already between Macau and Hong Kong is quite useful.
00:27There's a Brit, Charles Boxer, that did a lot about history of the Portuguese Empire, the Dutch Empire, seaborne empires, as he said.
00:37And so Macau has had this peculiar emphasis on gain, but now you see a very diverse place.
00:52And just to give you one example which is close to my interest and mine, the University of Macau, which existed some maybe 20 years ago, extremely small, now it's a huge island.
01:08Well, you mentioned Hong Kong. I mean handovers throughout history are sometimes extremely difficult.
01:16How do you evaluate this Portugal-Macau-China relationship 25 years on?
01:24The handover was very pungent in some sense. The governor was a military man, a good friend, and he put the Portuguese flag on his heart.
01:42I mean, it's a long time and it's always emotional, but I think the way Macau was becoming involved in the democratic Portugal was so intense that it really was a smooth transition, I would say that most people would say that.
02:09China has been investing in Portugal big time, so it has been in substantial companies, and so I think the relationship, traditional relationship with China is quite smooth. I perhaps could use that word.
02:32Let's talk about the current relationship then and the future relationship come to that. Let's look ahead. How would you evaluate the current economic relationship between Portugal and China?
02:45As I just mentioned, I believe it is very dynamic. There are large investments of China in Portugal, fossum, the three gorges, and the terrain, the material for electricity.
03:11These are relevant firms in the Portuguese and European set up, and it has happened in a very natural way, I would say.