Follow Portugal Immigration and Portuguese Education: In recent years, the academic relationship between Portuguese and Chinese universities has become increasingly close, with more and more Portuguese students in economics eager to explore this Eastern country and decode the operations of this vast market.
Today's China is leading global trends. Due to trade with China, more and more adults want to learn Chinese, and an increasing number of Portuguese parents are encouraging their children to learn Chinese from a young age. Portuguese universities, of course, cannot be distant from this opportunity-filled world and are strengthening connections between the two countries year by year: through student and faculty exchanges, seminars, and conferences, or sending students to visit China to better understand this market filled with potential and business elites.
Currently, a group of students from ISEG in Portugal is making a 13-day academic visit to China; they are graduate students in Business Administration and Marketing. This visit, conducted annually in collaboration with the Economics Society, includes locations in Beijing, Dalian, Chongqing, Hong Kong, and Macau, to learn about the development of major state-owned enterprises and the economic and business cooperation between the two countries. The theme of the visit changes every year, with this year's theme focusing on marketing. This is crucial for expanding perspectives on the Chinese economy and for boosting Portuguese exports and attracting foreign investment.
"China has tremendous market potential, but this recognition is not very widespread in Portugal. Portuguese companies often misinterpret this huge market. We need to go there to see, understand, and internalize what we observe. The importance of academic visits lies here," said Fernanda Ilhéu, the academic visit coordinator and a faculty member at ISEG, who lived in Macau for 18 years, 11 of which she served as the director of the Portugal-China Chamber of Commerce.
She also pointed out that common mistakes made by many Portuguese companies include the choice of locations for industrial development, the selection of partners, and how products fit the characteristics of local consumers, often overlooking cultural factors.
"China has seen the potential benefits of our country; many Chinese investors keep coming here, and we must seize this opportunity," she added.
It is reported that The Lisbon MBA has a partnership with Fudan University in Shanghai, where students and professors work on a real business project through this collaboration, with a reciprocal exchange model: Chinese and Portuguese students swap places for two weeks in each other's countries. The Lisbon MBA director mentioned that they aim to develop projects that can truly grow in China, with this year's focus on Sumol Compal, where students will understand the operations of the Chinese market to lay a foundation for the internationalization of this Portuguese brand.
Other institutions are also beginning to establish a 'China Path': The School of Business and Economics at the New University of Lisbon has a unit called 'Doing Business with China', aimed at decoding the key secrets to commercial success in this Eastern country, which also includes study tours in China.
The Faculty of Economics at the Catholic University of Lisbon holds a 50% share in the University of St. Joseph in Macau and has partnerships with many other educational institutions in China; it is also seeking student exchanges in other Eastern countries.
The Porto Business School has also collaborated with the HSBC Business School of Peking University and Zhejiang University. Meanwhile, the University of Coimbra has signed cooperation agreements with 13 higher education institutions in China and Macau. Unraveling the secrets of the Chinese market seems to have become the motto of most Portuguese universities.
