As editors, it is a great honor to witness the fulfillment of such an important project meant to improve knowledge on challenges and opportunities arising from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for Portuguese-speaking countries (PSCs). The timing could not be more relevant given the solemnity marking the 20th anniversary of Macau’s successful handover to China. The occasion matters for two main reasons: Macau was the jewel of Portuguese presence in the East for centuries; and this special administrative region is bound to play an important role in the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The latter is one of the two main components of the BRI, which is hybrid in its essence, as it consists of both land and sea corridors. However, we could also add a third major connectivity platform: digital silk roads that will be increasingly important in the future.
The reader may certainly be wondering why on earth a book about PSCs was written in English? After all, it would make sense to write it in Portuguese, the fifth most spoken language in the world. Although we, the editors, are aware of this peculiarity, we believe that, despite the importance of the Portuguese language, English has nonetheless gained the status of a universal language and suits our main intent of reaching a broader audience. Allowing people from literally all parts of the world – and who share the same interest in China’s BRI and PSCs – to read this book certainly makes any editor proud of his work. Nevertheless, one must not confuse pride with fulfilling a mission, and, in that light, we recognize that the issues addressed by this monograph should remain a topic for careful thought in the future. In fact, since we are firmly convinced that the BRI is the future of regional and worldwide integration, such a huge initiative that is bound to gradually change borders (not in terms of sovereignty, but mainly with regard to economics and politics) would certainly require more and more books, an ongoing endeavor to maintain the general public updated on this matter. The chessboard representing the BRI does not include any strange pieces, or remote places, because, in the end, they all fit together. That said, we felt that it would be somewhat unwise to limit our audience to Portuguese-speaking readers. Why should we editors limit the language scope by excluding potentially interested readers when the BRI is itself inclusive, rather than exclusive?
Let us now highlight the added value of this contribution. Firstly, until now and to our knowledge, there is no other book in English addressing PSCs in the framework of China’s BRI. Even in Portuguese it is extremely rare to find one (one book so far has been written). Secondly, judging by the variety of subjects analyzed in this book, one cannot but conclude that this is a comprehensive monograph which can be used not only by lecturers as an academic tool, but also by anyone who wants to improve his/her knowledge on the BRI. In fact, this leads us to a third related added value which, in our view, is the book’s easily understood contents and language. The monograph was not written using technical language, although at times we cannot avoid certain expressions (recall that the BRI is itself a technical expression), so that a broader audience with different degrees of knowledge on the topics discussed here can easily understand our message. The book has other distinctive features, such as contributions by experts on each topic. These writers did not refrain from making policy recommendations to boost the BRI’s success within PSCs, thereby avoiding previous mistakes such as the ones that José Nelson Bessa Maia carefully stresses in his chapter when he refers to former integration projects in Latin America that failed to achieve their goal.
Another added value of this book is that each author does not take sides. In other words, we invited experts who are not afraid of being critical. What do we mean by being critical here? We want to make clear that the purpose of this book is not formulating opinions for or against the BRI or any PSC, among others. Not at all. Instead, experts have made use of scientific and thus objective data, sources and arguments to provide original non-published and relevant contributions. Our aim here is not to tell a story, but to present facts and let readers judge for themselves. Finally, being critical as we see it, is being honest regardless of what one wants to hear or not, because facts do not lie, they merely reflect reality. Another distinct value of this book is that the chapters go beyond economics, as we acknowledge that the BRI is much more than figures. That is why we have sought to maintain a comprehensive approach, in which geopolitics and geostrategy aim at complementing what mere numbers cannot reveal. After all, as Fernanda Ilhéu explains in her chapter, the BRI is not a Marshall Plan, to the extent that it is not motivated or guided by a rationale of economic aid. The context of the BRI is actually very different from the scenario in which Europe needed to be reconstructed after the Second World War. That however does not prevent the BRI from financially assisting some countries in need, which is indeed what China has been doing for a long time, even before the BRI was launched, either by pardoning external debt or by providing more advantageous loans than the ones made by Western countries, among other assistance measures. Nevertheless, the essence of the BRI is not purely based on altruism, to the extent that setting up the Community of Common Destiny is also combined with a market-oriented focus aimed at creating the most promising economic corridors in the world. This brings considerable opportunities for PSCs, as this monograph intends to explain. But again, risks are present, namely the one of deindustrialization, if PSCs rely solely on the opportunity provided by China and do nothing to diversify their economies. Most of these countries are still developing countries in Africa or Asia, but Brazil is an emerging country in South America and Portugal is a developed European economy recovering well from the serious financial crisis between 2010 and 2014. The strategic location or territorial size of a PSC country does not necessarily entail automatic gains from the BRI for that country. To be sure, a small state like Luxembourg or Switzerland can be economically important, while a large state like Angola or Brazil can still be struggling to defeat its own demons, since there is a long way to go before wealth is distributed among the entire population. Interestingly, what happens with PSCs is that they are all small states in terms of economics and military power. Some of them have gold, oil, gas, diamonds, yet these are insufficient per se to overcome the label of “small”. However, taken together, weak as they may be, their potential is considerable in many fields, in terms of market size, tourist destination, source of raw materials and, not less important, human capital.