The Lusophone countries ( Portugal, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guine – Bissau, Angola Mozambique and East Timor) are a unique group of states and regions, spread all over the world, with common language and cultural heritage and at the same time – with diverse levels of economic development and institutional capacity.

Among these States and Regions the Special Administrative Region of Macau plays an unique and important role – it offers the PRC a unique platform for global outreach, investment opportunities and developmental activities. Because of its position in the history of economic and cultural relations between China and Portugal, it can serve as a genuine bridge between cultures that are otherwise quite different.

People’s Republic of China is rapidly developing as a country of global ambitions. China is becoming an interesting – and increasingly important economic and cultural partner for many countries. Increasingly, China’s relations with the non-Chinese countries is being viewed as an integral part of the globalization process and as important element of the global commercial and cultural exchange. The amazing economic growth, the millenary traditions, the growing capacity of the China businesses and institutions makes the Chinese economic expansion inevitable. However the effectiveness of the economic relations is directly related to the degree of knowledge and understanding of the economic, political and cultural context of the given country. With this respect Macau may play a crucial role as a launch pad for Chinese economic and developmental initiatives targeting the Lusophone world. To facilitate this cultural and economic exchange, the Investment Centre for Economic and Cultural Relations between China and the Lusophone Countries was founded with the mission:

To stimulate and facilitate the cultural and economic cooperation between China and the Lusophone Countries by creating a permanent platform of intercultural dialogue and by supporting initiatives between China and the Portuguese speaking countries  through research, education, debate and exchange between specialists from the areas involved.

Objectives:

Facilitation of economic and cultural cooperation is a process and not a goal by itself; therefore the activities of the Centre have to be viewed as a series of interrelated steps that are adapting to the reality and are at the same time striving to change it – to bring about a vision of the future where China and the Lusophone world work together to achieve economic prosperity, institutional effectiveness, mutual respect and understanding.

The initial objectives of the Centre for the year 2008-2009 are the following:

To build an institutional framework, where it will be possible to carry out meaningful Analysis of the economic, political, governance etc. situation in a given Lusophone country, including an analysis of the current status and the perspectives before the Country/China relations.. This would require a series of Country Studies to be carried out through a unified methodology, reviewing the most important aspects f the potential China/Country relations. It would be important to have the output of these studies translated into three languages – Chinese, Portuguese and English; the country studies will be regularly updated in order to reflect the changing reality.

To stimulate the Exchange of practices between China and the Lusophone countries through the following vehicles:

To implement a series of standardised yet reflecting the local specificity interventions in selected Lusophone countries both as a trust-building exercise and to initiate the cultural dialogue in order to “pave the way” for further deepening of the PRC-Country relations. The projects must have attainable and realistic goals and should be able to effectively make a difference in the given country.

Organizational Structure – The Precondition

In order to achieve our mission an organizational structure must be put in place to provide backstopping, expertise and support. The existence of such structure also guarantees the long-term sustainability and consistency of the project approaches. The following organizational Structure is proposed:

Programs Coordinator – Macau

Program Officer, Training

Program Officer, Analyses and Governance

Program Officer, Investments

Office support staff

National structures / coordinators maintain contact with the Academia, the Government and the Business

Stakeholders:

TIRI / PIEN, IIUM, Governments, Academia, Business

Programs Coordinator – Lusophone

The Centre will have a provisional office at the Inter University Institute of Macau – IIUM; thus being supported initially by IIUM staff and donors. This will minimize the initial start-up costs and will allow for more funds to be allocated for actual programmatic activities. To guarantee professional quality of the services of the Centre, though the number of the paid staff initially will be minimal, at least the position of the Programs Coordinator has to be filled. The Program Officer positions may be initially filled on voluntary basis; with Program officers based either in or outside Macau. With the expansion of the project activities, local (national) structures will have to be established. The transitional period may envisage also the position of a National Coordinator (voluntary or paid, depending on the availability of resources).

An important element of the Centre activities will be the distribution of a Magazine and building and maintenance of a web-site.

Proposed Interventions

Needs analysis and diagnostic surveys of selected Lusophone countries. This will be carried out by a team of experts – both international and local – that will initially develop a methodology and next will apply the methodology to selected Lusophone countries. The survey must address several specific issues :

Masters Program in Lusophone – China relations studies

The Inter-University Institute of Macau offers a Masters program in Lusophone studies which can be replicated in all target countries, paying due attention to customizations needed to reflect the local context. The program will include among other areas the issues of development, institutional capacity building, good governance; courses in Portuguese and Chinese; music and arts of China and Portuguese origin. This will stimulate the academic exchange between China (SAR Macau) and the Lusophone countries and will provide us with beachhead for further interventions as well as with access to a large pool of local experts.

Strengthening the public administration capacity of the Relevant Lusophone Country public administration through upgrading the existing means of communication within and outside the Government.

One of the most serious problems related to the expansion of the economic and cultural contacts is the lack of reliable information regarding the different Government procedures, laws and regulations. The Goal of this project would be to improve the access to Government information of the participating country to the rest of the world by building a series of Government web-sites, connected to a Government web-portal, where all the information will be available regarding the national legislation, procedures and practices, functions of the state bodies etc. In fact such a project may also be regarded as an initial step to building an effective e-government in the specific country. At least at the initial stage of the project the maintenance of the e-infrastructure (portals, sites etc as well as their content) must be outsourced when is no local capacity; simultaneously a process of building local capacity and local ownership must be put in place. Through this project we are not simply building web sites – we are creating an information web and we generate content that allows to access Government information; we build contacts in the respective country; we enhance the transparency of the country, support the efforts of the civil society in the country and facilitate the work of the potential investors, trade and professional associations.