Italian Prime Minister Giorgiа Meloni paid a visit to China from July 27 to 31, serving as a suitable occasion to discuss both some aspects of bilateral relations between these countries and the geopolitical background against which such a remarkable event took place.

The state of bilateral relations, main events, results of the visit

The main event to take place during the visit was the meeting of G. Meloni with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In receiving the guest, the host drew attention to the centuries-old ties between China and the Roman Empire, which were located at the two ends of the Silk Road.

Any associations of present-day Italy with the Roman Empire are obviously conditional; this historical reference probably had a certain relevance and was rather a hidden reproach for the inconsistency of the current Rome’s behaviour vis-à-vis the key political and economic project of China: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In early March 2019, during the Chinese leader’s visit to Italy, one of G. Meloni’s predecessors, Giuseppe Conte, signed a bilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) for joining BRI.

Thus, Italy became the only country of the ‘Collective West’ that joined China’s most important project. Since the beginning of the sharp deterioration of the international situation at the end of 2019, China has begun to be seen (together with Russia) as the main source of challenges to Western interests. It seems that the government of G. Meloni could not withstand the reproachful glances of its allies focused and in December 2023, quietly withdrew from the BRI by non-extension of the five-year validity period of the aforementioned MoU, which ended three months later.

However, there was apparently a feeling that things somehow turned out poorly. Purely practical considerations of the extreme usefulness of maintaining relations with the second-most powerful country in the world, considering that the entire former world order and its increasingly ephemeral alliances are collapsing, remain. Now........

© New Eastern Outlook