Portugal’s Minister of State and Foreign Affairs Paulo Rangel is slated to start a four-day working visit to China, including the nation’s special administrative regions of Macau and Hong Kong, tomorrow, public broadcaster TDM reported at the weekend.
According to TDM, Rangel is scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Liu Jianchao, the minister-level head of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC), in Beijing tomorrow.
Wang also heads the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC. He is also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
Wang met with Portugal’s then foreign minister João Gomes Cravinho on the sidelines of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in September 2023. In May 2023, Vice President Han Zheng paid an official three-day visit to Portugal at the invitation of the Portuguese government. On February 8, 2024, President Xi Jinping exchanged congratulatory messages with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa on the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Rangel, a lawyer by profession, tomorrow will also meet with the rector of the Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU), Jia Wenjian, where he will give a talk on “Portuguese Language and Culture”. Portuguese is among the 101 languages taught at the university, which has some 10,000 students and 1,200 full-time faculty members including about 200 foreign teachers.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Rangel will attend the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference in Hainan Province. The conference will be held from tomorrow through Friday, with the theme of “Shaping Asia’s Future in a Changing World”. In Boao, Rangel is also slated to meet with Ding Xuexiang, the first-ranked vice-premier and sixth-ranked member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the CPC.
On Friday, the last day of his working visit to China, Rangel will visit Macau and Hong Kong. In Macau, he is scheduled to meet separately with Chief Executive Sam Hou Fai and local Portuguese community representatives. He will also visit the Portuguese school.
In Hong Kong, his China tour will end with a visit to an exhibition on the Portuguese community there, themed “Estórias Lusas – Stories of the Hong Kong Portuguese”, at the Hong Kong Museum of History in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon.
The visits to Macau and Hong Kong will be coordinated by the Foreign Ministry’s respective Commissioner’s Office in the two special administrative regions. Macau-based Foreign Ministry Commissioner Liu Xianfa told a briefing attended by local media representatives last Monday he would ensure that Rangel’s visit to Macau is a success.
Rangel, 57, has been Portugal’s top diplomat since April 2024.
According to the website of the Foreign Ministry of the Portuguese Republic, Rangel has been deputy leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) since July 2022. He was a member of the European Parliament between 2009 and 2024.
He has taught at the Catholic Porto University Law School and the University of Porto Business School Executive MBA.
According to previous media reports, Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro tendered his resignation on March 11 after his minority centre-right government lost a confidence vote in the Assembly of the Republic (parliament). Montenegro had called the confidence vote after battling attacks over government contracts held by his family’s companies.
Portuguese President Rebelo de Sousa announced on March 13 that the country’s third general election in the last three years had been set for May 18.
According to an opinion poll quoted by France’s newswire AFP earlier this month, the centre-left opposition Socialist Party (PS) was slightly ahead on voting intentions, at 30.8 percent. Montenegro’s centre-right, three-party Democratic Alliance (AD), comprising Montenegro’s PSD, the Democratic and Social Centre-People’s Party (CDS-PP) and the People’s Monarchist Party (PPM) had 25.8 percent, followed by the far-right Chega (“Enough”) party at 17.0 percent.
Montenegro has said he will run for prime minister again in the upcoming election.
Undated file photo of Portugal’s Minister of State and Foreign Affairs Paulo Rangel – Image courtesy of Portuguese Foreign Ministry.
