The Development of Forum Macao as a Platform for Cooperation Between China and Portuguese-Speaking States

The colonial legacy remains one of the significant factors of the aggravation of contradictions and escalation of conflicts in world politics . However, the case of China shows that historically established political, economic, cultural and other features of the former possessions of Western empires can be used to achieve their current goals on the global stage . An example of this is the Forum Macao — a dialogue platform, which, based on the past of Macao (Aomen) as a part of the Portuguese Empire, is currently used as a platform for strengthening cooperation between China and Portuguese-speaking countries of the world, whose vast majority represents the Global South . Effectively using the ties between Macao and Portuguese-speaking area which developed during the colonial period, China proposes its Forum Macao as one of a number of platforms that reflect China’s own formats of multilateral international cooperation, which can form the basis of the emerging world order . The Belt and Road initiative plays a fundamental role in this work, which growth is essentially dependent on the institutionalization of such initiatives . And in the context of such an external background, internal integration in the region of the Pearl River Delta, which includes Guangdong Province, special administrative regions of Macao and Hong Kong, is getting a stimulating factor for the further development of the Forum Macao . As a result, conducting this analysis within the framework of a systematic approach and applying the historical genetic method, it has been identifies that, meeting the goals of the PRC’s foreign policy aspirations, the dialogue platform in the form of the Forum Macao receives incentives for a phased transformation into a full-fledged international organization.

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