The Italian government is considering withdrawing from China's large-scale One Belt, One Road project, which includes a comprehensive program for developing China's trade with the rest of the world and provides for large-scale investments in the development of transport and logistics infrastructure. As part of the project, infrastructure projects worth $900 billion were financed worldwide.
Source. This was reported by Bloomberg.
Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni is inclined to withdraw from the agreement "due to serious political risks," the article says.
It is emphasized that Italy is the only G7 country that has joined this Chinese project.
"The agreement was signed in 2019 during the premiership of Giuseppe Conte, but did not lead to deeper integration between China and Italy compared to other EU countries. However, there are risks of withdrawal, both economic and political, as China may take retaliatory steps," Bloomberg says.
The publication points out that such a decision by Italy will hinder the efforts of Chinese President Xi Jinping to sow discord between European countries that want to maintain economic ties with Beijing and the United States, which is in confrontation with China.
Italy is the third largest EU country by volume of goods imported from China and the fourth largest exporter to China, which is a key export market for luxury brands.
It is known that Meloni has not yet responded to an official invitation to visit China, which was previously scheduled for May.
"Preparations for the visit have been suspended while Italy looks for ways not to extend the agreement under the One Belt, One Road project, while limiting the impact of this decision on ties with China," the article says.
Background. As a reminder, China has recently been at the center of a political scandal. Chinese Ambassador to France Liu Shaye called Crimea a "Russian" territory. He also questioned the sovereignty of the former Soviet republics. His words provoked a negative reaction from the Baltic states and Ukraine. A day later, the Chinese Embassy removed the transcript of the interview with Liu Shaye, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Beijing "respects the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries."
Today, it became known that Xi Jinping had a phone conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the first time since the invasion began (although he had been reluctant to do so before).