Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni signs new cooperation plan with China during visit to Beijing

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, currently on an official visit to Beijing, announced the signing of a three-year action plan to boost cooperation between Italy and China. The move comes after Italy withdrew from China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) last year, having been the only G7 country to participate in the infrastructure and transport project since its signing in 2019.

The announcement was made at the start of a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on July 28. The visit is Meloni’s first official trip to China since taking office in 2022.

Meloni expressed her pleasure to be in Beijing for her government’s inaugural official visit, emphasizing the importance of reconnecting the two sides. “I am very happy to be here for this government’s first official visit,” she said, noting that the visit was a sign of their willingness to begin a new phase of their partnership, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of their global strategic partnership.

China’s ambassador to Italy, Jia Guide, said Meloni also attended the 7th China Italy Business Forum, where she and Premier Li Qiang signed agreements. The three-year action plan covers trade, investment, education, environmental protection and food security.

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Meloni highlighted the importance of the six agreements signed, which cover industrial cooperation in strategic sectors such as electric mobility and renewable energy. “It currently covers strategic industrial sectors such as electric mobility and renewable energy, sectors where China has been operating at the technological frontier for some time,” she noted.

China has been involved in trade conflicts with the United States and the European Union over electric vehicles and renewable energy products. Meloni called the business forum a “great opportunity” to strengthen the partnership by assessing successes and challenges to make the trade relationship more equitable and mutually beneficial.

Italy has a noticeable trade deficit with China and an investment imbalance, with Chinese investment in Italy accounting for about a third of Italian investment in China. Meloni has expressed a desire to address this gap, stating, “It’s a gap I would like to see reduced in an appropriate way.”

On December 6, 2023, Italy officially announced that it would not renew the 2019 memorandum of understanding regarding its participation in the BRI. Italian President Sergio Mattarella is expected to visit China in October, Voice of America reported. Analysts suggest that the visits indicate Rome’s efforts to repair relations with Beijing after its withdrawal from the BRI, which was launched in 2013.

Italy remains China’s fourth-largest trading partner in the European Union, while China is Italy’s largest trading partner in Asia. Bilateral trade reached $80 billion, mostly made up of Chinese exports to Italy. Italian exports to China approached nearly $18 billion in 2022, up from $14 billion in 2019, while Chinese exports to Italy nearly doubled from more than $34 billion to more than $62 billion over the same period.

(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by the Newsx team and is published from a news feed.)

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