China.org: Portugal, for historical reasons, plays today an important role in the international stage. The Portuguese language is, apart from English, the only world language with presence in all the continents as an official language. Moreover, it is the fifth language in total number of native speakers, with more than 200 million people, 250 million people. The importance of the Portuguese language is kept by institutions such as Instituto Camões or the CPLP (Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries). How is this situation considered by the Portuguese Government and how the Government deals with this preeminent position of the Portuguese language?

Ambassador: The first thing I should say is that we take duly into account the strategic importance for us of the Portuguese language and that its promotion was already assigned as a priority of our foreign policy. We have eight countries that officially speak Portuguese, with around 250 million speakers. As you said, we are one of the very few languages that are present in all the continents. This is really something significant. I would say that we have been promoting the Portuguese language, creating an extensive network for teaching it, in cooperation with other Portuguese speaking countries. This is a very important part of our strategy. Another one is promoting the use of Portuguese language in international fora and in international organizations, like the UN. (I recall that Portuguese is already an official language of the African Union). On the other hand, we cannot forget the number and size of our communities throughout the world. The language is a very important link with them, so we have to intensify the teaching of Portuguese language in those communities to attract their young generations and to keep them in contact with the language and culture of their parents. Portuguese, in our view, is not only a language for communication and cultural interchange, but also for tourism, business and trade. But we recognize that more efforts must be made in this regard. Besides Instituto Camões, which is a Portuguese institution, we have the International Institute for the Portuguese Language, which works together with the Community of the Portuguese speaking countries, the CPLP, and we have also created the Fund for the Portuguese Language to provide financial support to promote it. We have a number of concerted initiatives together with other Portuguese speaking countries in this field, taking into account that strategically it is an important factor for all the CPLP members.