Italy’s Giorgia Meloni visits China to reset ties

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has arrived in China for a four-day official visit to reset relations following her dramatic decision last year to pull Italy out of Beijing’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative.  

The Italian premier will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang as the two countries seek to stabilise ties after recent turbulence.

Meloni is keen to minimise the fallout from Rome’s withdrawal from the BRI, a $1tn global infrastructure investment scheme that Italy joined in 2019 to the chagrin of the US and other western allies.  

Meloni herself had publicly criticised then-prime minister Giuseppe Conte’s decision to sign up to Xi’s flagship initiative as a “mistake”, and her government formally notified Beijing it wanted to pull out of the programme in December, just before Italy assumed the G7 presidency. 

Many Italian companies still fear Beijing could retaliate against them for the decision, though Rome tried to limit the damage by carefully choreographing a low-key exit in which Meloni emphasised Italy’s determination to maintain “mutually beneficial” relations.

“We need to preserve our relationship with China, given that the economic sustainability of Italian exports is dependent on the quality of relations with China,” said Giuliano Noci of Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management. 

“This visit has an economic importance for Italy,” he added. “It is to say that, it’s true that we exited from the BRI, but we recognise China’s specific status, and we aim to nurture a strategic dialogue.”

Michele Geraci, a former senior Italian government official who championed Rome’s joining the BRI in 2019 and now frequently teaches in China, said Beijing would also probably be keen to leave recent setbacks behind.

“China’s goal will be to pretend that everything is smooth,” he said. “They have no great interest in highlighting that Italy exited the BRI. They don’t like it, but they don’t want to make a big fuss.”

Shortly before Meloni’s arrival, the Global Times, a Chinese Communist party newspaper, blamed Washington for Italy’s BRI exit and said economic and trade ties remained strong. 

“Italy’s withdrawal from the BRI was not due to a reluctance to co-operate with China or Meloni’s own political beliefs, but rather due to the huge pressure from the US and other major Western powers at the time,” the newspaper cited an analyst as saying.

Beijing is keen to court European governments to exploit any differences between them and the US over issues ranging from Ukraine to trade and export controls.

Cui Hongjian, an analyst at China Institute of International Studies Research institute, said Beijing would also probably raise Italy’s support for European Union tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.

But its main priority would be to stabilise the relationship in the face of geopolitical uncertainties, including those stemming from the US election. China would tell the Italian side “we need some more resilience in the relationship”, he said.

Yet Meloni herself has always viewed China warily, accusing it of unfair trade practices and warning of a potential risk to Europe from over-dependence on Chinese companies in strategic supply chains.  

As a youth minister in the government of late prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, she urged Italian athletes to boycott the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics in protest at China’s human rights record, especially in Tibet.

More recently, her government invoked national security concerns to strip China’s Sinochem of its influence as the largest shareholder in Italian tyremaker Pirelli, and Italy supports the imposition of steep EU tariffs on China’s electric vehicles.

During Meloni’s current visit, the countries will mark the 700th anniversary of the death of Italian explorer Marco Polo as well as the 20th anniversary of a “comprehensive strategic partnership” signed by Berlusconi and bilateral trade that was worth €66.8bn last year, albeit tilted heavily in favour of Beijing.

But Geraci said the trip was unlikely to result in much substance. “She will be welcomed with a red carpet, as is normal, but there is a strong belief in the Chinese government that she is not in favour of doing business with China,” Geraci said.

“It’s like: you are my girlfriend, you want to split up with me, but you say you still want to be friends,” he concluded. “So what do I say? You are still pretty. But you want to split up with me.”