China.org: In 2007, as you just said, the Portuguese Prime Minister, José Sócrates, visited China. One of the purposes of this official meeting was to enhance the exportations from Portugal to China and to reinforce the presence of Portuguese companies and products into the Chinese market. Nowadays, what is the exact situation of Portugal’s presence in the Chinese economy?

Ambassador: In what specifically concerns the Portuguese exports, they reached a level in 2008 of about three hundred and eighty six million US dollars from a total of two billion and almost five hundred million of the bilateral trade. So this is the unbalance I mentioned to you above. Our Prime Minister was here in February 2007. He was here again in November 2007 for the Portuguese presidency of the European Union. After a certain stagnation, we achieved, even though we are confronted with this global crisis and with a decrease in the international trade, to increase our exports to China by 21 percent, more or less, in the first eight months of the current year, which is encouraging. But still we have a long way to go until our economic and trade exchanges can live up to their potential. Our sales here for China’s market consist mainly in paper, paper pulp, cork, marble and construction materials, fundamentally ornamental rocks. We sell also some raw materials, like copper and aluminum; machinery and equipments; car components, chemical products, even furniture. You can see that there is a wide range of products. Even though we have made some progress, we are certainly eager to boost our exports to China much more than we have done. Wine for instance, and the food sector, in general, is also a sector which has shown good perspectives. Wine exports, in particular, have been quite promising, not only to mainland China, but to Macao and Hong Kong as well.