Italy should not let siren call of Washington lead it astray from Belt and Road Initiative: China Daily editorial

The souring attitude of Italy toward the Belt and Road Initiative over the past three months shows how much the Giorgia Meloni government is willing to allow its China policy to be subject to the influence of Washington.

Shortly after attending the G7 Summit in Hiroshima in May — in which the United States urged all the other members to "de-risk" their trade and economy by easing, if not ending, their reliance on China, Italian Prime Minister Meloni told the media: "Italy is the only G7 member that signed up to the accession memorandum to the Silk Road, but it is not the European or Western country with the strongest economic relations and trade flows with China."

That is a Washington-style distortion of the initiative. It is by no means a platform for harvesting China's development dividends, but one through which countries participate on an equal footing to tap into their complementarity for common development.

In her meeting with US President Joe Biden on Thursday last week, Meloni reportedly told Biden that her government intends to pull Italy out of the initiative. To avoid that move being seen as something enforced on Italy by the US, the Italian leader stressed in the news conference at the White House after her meeting with Biden: "If you think that the US demands or imposes the policy on this, you are wrong. The conversation is broad and involves all G7 countries and it is about de-risking from supply chain dependence on China, which is a priority."

Italy's participation in the initiative drew immediate, harsh criticism from the US back in 2019. The latter has never stopped smearing the initiative put forward by China in 2013 as an "opaque geopolitical scheme", even though it has proved to be an effective public good promoting the common development of the more than 100 participating countries and international organizations.

As Italy will assume the presidency of G7 next year and is due to make a decision on whether to renew the five-year agreement on the initiative in March, it is clear that Washington has been busy in its efforts to ensure that Italy sets "the right" example for the other G7 members.

Meloni should be reminded of what she told the Chinese leader at their meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in November. She said that Italy stands ready to continue advancing bilateral cooperation in such areas as trade and culture. Italy does not approve of bloc confrontation, and believes that countries should respect their differences and disagreements, strengthen solidarity, keep to dialogue and exchanges, and enhance mutual understanding. And it hopes to closely collaborate with China within the UN, the G20 and other frameworks to tackle the various pressing challenges facing the world in a more effective manner.

Meloni should hold true to those words, rather than being swayed by Washington's scaremongering.