Carmen Amado Mendes is a professor of international relations at the School of Economics and the lead researcher on the project titled "An analysis of the 'One Country, Two Systems' formula: The role of Macau in China's relations with the European Union and the Portuguese Speaking Countries" at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. She is also a member of the Board of the European Association for Chinese Studies.

"Setting Portugal's approach to the Macau question in the context of broader domestic and international political dilemmas, Mendes provides a nuanced picture of the institutional inertias, party rivalries, and post-colonial exhaustion that shaped the entire negotiation process. She shows, paradoxically, that although these factors weakened Portugal’s position relative to China, this weakness sometimes put Portugal in the driver's seat at the negotiating table."
—Cathryn Clayton, author of Sovereignty at the Edge: Macau and the Question of Chineseness

"Portugal, China and the Macau Negotiations is not only a very valuable insight into the negotiations on the future of Macau but also a useful guide to understanding the larger relationship between Portugal and China."
—António Costa Lobo, Portuguese Ambassador to China, 1982–1985

"Carmen Mendes gives us a clear and balanced historical account of the Macau negotiations. We are told that 'history is an argument without end', but this is the first book written not by an actor in the events but by an independent academic observer. This important book will help considerably in our understanding of China-Portugal relations."
—Jose Duarte de Jesus, Portuguese Ambassador to China, 1993–1997

"Mendes presents the nuances of the 'Macau question,' issues on the negotiation table, the strategies of the Portuguese and the Chinese negotiators, and an evaluation of those strategies. Considering the scarcity of literature on the Sino-Portuguese negotiations, this book makes a valuable contribution to the field." — Zhidong Hao, University of Macau