A five-day visit will take place from September 8 to 12, marking nine years since the previous Prime Minister, António Costa, visited China.
The delegation from the government will include the Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, Paulo Rangel, the Minister of Economy and Territorial Cohesion, Manuel Castro Almeida, and the president of AICEP, Madalena Oliveira e Silva.
The provisional schedule indicates that Luis Montenegro will land in Beijing on Monday afternoon (at 4:00 p.m. local time, 9:00 a.m. in Lisbon), accompanied by his wife. He will be welcomed with a ceremony including an honor guard.
On that day, only a visit to a section of the Great Wall of China, the planet’s largest fortification, classified as a World Heritage Site in 1987, and which began construction over two millennia ago, is planned.
The official agenda begins on Tuesday, with a wreath-laying ceremony at the Monument to the People’s Heroes in Tiananmen Square, after which the Prime Minister will head to the Great Hall of the People.
Besides the meeting with the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping—politically the most significant since the Chinese head of state receives few foreign prime ministers—Luis Montenegro will first meet with the President of the National People’s Congress of China, Zhao Leji.
Subsequently, the Portuguese head of government will visit the Forbidden City before a working meeting with the Chinese Premier, Li Qiang, during which a ceremony for the signing of bilateral legal instruments is scheduled.
The Prime Minister will depart on Tuesday evening for the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR), where he has a scheduled agenda on the morning of the 10th, beginning with a meeting with the chief executive, Sam Hou Fai.
This will be followed by a visit to the Portuguese School of Macau and a reception with the Portuguese community, including a stroll through the streets of this region—whose administration transferred from Portugal to China in 1999—where he will visit the Ruins of St. Paul and the Senado Square.
Montenegro and the delegation will depart around lunchtime for Tokyo, where, the following day, the Prime Minister will meet with his Japanese counterpart, Shigeru Ishiba, with a joint press conference scheduled at the end.
Then, the Portuguese head of government will proceed to Keidanren (the Japan Business Federation), for meetings with senior representatives of about a dozen Japanese multinational companies.
Luis Montenegro will also visit the location where the Portuguese team is training for the Athletics World Championship, which will take place from September 13 to 21. In the late afternoon, he will preside over the signing of a memorandum of understanding between AICEP (Portuguese Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade) and its Japanese counterpart, JETRO.
On Friday, the last day of this official visit, the Prime Minister will travel by train to Nagoya, the capital and largest metropolitan region of Aichi Prefecture, before proceeding to the final program point, a visit to Expo Osaka.
Before visiting the pavilions of Portugal and Japan, a lunch is scheduled for the entire Portuguese delegation, prepared by chefs Pedro Lemos and Yoshida San.
Expo Osaka concludes on October 13, with Portugal represented among the 161 countries present, focusing on the theme: “Designing Future Societies for Our Lives.”
The Portuguese participation in the exhibition is themed “Ocean: Blue Dialogue,” involving more than 150 companies, associations, municipalities, and national artists.
