On June 11th, Minister Luo Shugang of Culture and Tourism meets with Portuguese Minister Graça Fonseca of Culture at the Palace Museum in Beijing. Both sides exchanged views on deepening China-Portugal cooperation in culture and tourism.
Luo Shugang said, the two countries boast a long history of exchanges and they have been maintaining high-level development regarding bilateral ties in recent years. It is also believed that leaders of both sides attache great importance to developing relations between China and Portugal as President Xi Jinping and President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa paid mutual visits within half of a year. Since the year of 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Portugal, both sides take this as a good opportunity to hold the “cultural festival” mutually. The Palace Museum, China National Peking Opera Company and National Ballet of China went to Portugal to participate in the “China Cultural Festival” activities. In the meantime, a series of Portuguese Cultural Festival activities, co-hosted by the National Archive of Torre do Tombo, Portugal Azulejo Museum and National Ballet of Portugal, were unveiled in Beijing during Minister Fonseca’s visit. The mutual holding of cultural festival enables two peoples to enjoy the other culture and arts closely, thus further enhancing mutual understanding on each other’s national culture. It is hoped that both sides could take “cultural festival” as starting point to reinforce cultural exchanges and tourism cooperation under the framework of Belt and Road Initiative, make new progress in people-to-people and cultural exchanges and contribute to enhancing mutual understanding and friendship between two sides. Minister Fonseca highly agreed upon this and advised both countries on strengthening cooperation in cultural heritage protection, modern arts and music and exchanges of two country’s artists, as well as continuously consolidate the foundation for friendly cooperation.
After the meeting, Minister Luo Shugang and Minister Fonseca jointly attended the opening ceremony of the “The Land of Glazed Cities: 500 Years of Azulejo in Portugal” exhibition, which was co-hosted by Portugal Azulejo Museum and the Palace Museum.
Wang Xudong, director of the Palace Museum, Xie Jinying, director of the Bureau for External Cultural Relations of the Chinese Culture and Tourism Ministry and Portuguese Ambassador to China Augusto Duarte also attended the above-mentioned event.