Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (L) pledged to reset Italy’s relationship with China as she met Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing with the sides signing a three-year extension of a long-running economic cooperation agreement covering a range of sectors from aerospace to AI. Photo courtesy Italian Government Presidency of the Council of Ministers
July 29 (UPI) — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pledged to reset Italy’s relationship with China as she met with the country’s top leaders in Beijing and inked a three-year economic cooperation agreement across a range of sectors from aerospace to AI.
Speaking after meeting Premier Li Qiang on her first trip to China since becoming prime minister in 2022, Meloni said the five-day visit showed “the will to start a new phase” in Italian-Sino ties.
The two countries had agreed to boost “mutually beneficial cooperation between small and medium-sized enterprises in the fields of shipbuilding, aerospace, new energy, and artificial intelligence,” Li’s office said in a statement.
Hailing their action plan to strengthen their two-decade-long Global Strategic Partnership, Melioni said they talked about how to boost two-way trade and investment, scientific and cultural collaboration and constructive dialogue.
A news release issued by the Italian cabinet said they also discussed the management of major global challenges from artificial intelligence to climate change, agreeing to come up with shared solutions.
Meloni also held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
An Italy-China business forum attended by more than 100 firms and industry bodies hosted by Li and Meloni later Sunday yielded a further six new agreements on everything from electric vehicles and renewable energy, where China is on the cutting edge, to food security, the environment and education.
With bilateral trade of $72.3 billion, China is Italy’s largest non-European Union trading partner after the United States while Italy is China’s fourth-largest market, an imbalance Meloni told the forum she hoped would be redressed.
“Chinese investment in Italy is about a third of the level of Italian investments in China. It’s a gap that I’d like to see narrowed in the right way.”
“The Memorandum of Industrial Cooperation that we have signed is a significant step,” said Meloni.
Meloni’s visit comes after she confirmed to Beijing in December that her country was backing out of China’s flagship $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative to build and upgrade road, rail and port infrastructure to boost connectivity with Europe as well as other Asia regions.
She had called the involvement of her country — the only G7 nation to sign onto the project — a “big mistake” and since coming into office has proved more pro-western, pro-Nato in her foreign policy than expected and more so than previous administrations.
In June 2023, she blocked a Chinese takeover of tire maker Pirelli and backed tough new European Union import tariffs on Chinese EVs of almost 40% that came into force July 4 to protect European automakers from “unfair” competition from China rivals whom it claims are subsidized by the Chinese government.
Italy’s B&R membership raised concerns in the United States and other European countries that it could help China become dominant when it came to infrastructure and critical fields of technology.