Lisbon, Sept. 5, 2025 (Lusa) - The government wants to increase Japanese investment in Portugal and boost bilateral relations with this country, while also emphasising the "diplomatic tradition" of visits to China, which includes enhancing the Portuguese language and culture in Macau.

These are some of the objectives outlined by a source in the prime minister's office for the official visits that Luís Montenegro will make next week to China, where he will meet President Xi Jinping and visit the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR), and to Japan, with stops in Tokyo and Expo Osaka.

The prime minister's trip to Japan and the Osaka Expo was scheduled for May, but the resignation of the government - following the political crisis related to his family's company Spinumviva - and the subsequent early elections postponed the trip, the same reason why the 10 June celebrations in Macau with the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, were cancelled and ended up taking place in Munich and Stuttgart, Germany.

According to the prime minister's office, a visit to China was already planned for the second half of the year, so the two were combined for "logistical reasons", with a total duration of five days, the same source emphasising that there was no problem of "political sensitivity" with this option.

In Japan, the primary objective is to increase investment in Portugal and diversify it beyond the automotive industry. A partnership in the area of space is being studied between CEiiA (the Engineering and Development Centre in Matosinhos) and a Japanese company.

To this end, the Minister for the Economy and Territorial Cohesion, Manuel Castro Almeida, will have "a series of meetings with Japanese investors" and Luís Montenegro will meet with around a dozen companies "that have a concrete interest" in Portugal", explained the same source.

On the other hand, Portugal wants to "raise the level of the political and diplomatic relationship with Japan" to a strategic partnership, which will involve more mechanisms for bilateral relations and greater cultural exchange.

In São Bento, it was emphasised that "the positions of Japan and the European Union on the war in Ukraine and the Middle East coincide greatly".

As for China, although there is no such coincidence of views on many issues, a source in the prime minister's office emphasises that Luís Montenegro's visit is part of Portugal's "diplomatic tradition", since all heads of state and several prime ministers have visited this country, the "second largest economy in the world" and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

Highlights of this part of the visit include the prime minister's meetings "at the highest level" with the President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, with whom Montenegro is expected to discuss "the international context", and with his counterpart, Li Qiang, in a meeting in which the war in Ukraine is expected to be on the table.

In economic terms, the visit to China aims to improve the trade balance between the two countries, which is "strongly unbalanced" in Beijing's favour. Some memoranda of understanding are expected to be signed in the agri-food area.

"Portugal will convey to China that it believes in a rules-based trading system," said the same source.

The Portuguese Prime Minister's visit to China will take place the week after the meeting in Beijing of the leaders of China, Xi Jinping; Russia, Vladimir Putin; and North Korea, Kim Jong-un, at a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in the Pacific.

The meeting was labelled by the European Union's chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, on Wednesday as a "direct challenge" to the rules-based international order, which sends "anti-Western signals".

Luís Montenegro's quick visit to Macau, a territory that Portugal administered until 1999, is seen as a signal to China that the country continues to value the Portuguese presence in the region, especially in the areas of language and culture, and that "it is the singularities" of the Macau SAR that make it "a success story".

SMA/ADB // ADB.

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