Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that her country could maintain good relations with China without being part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) deal that other nations, including the United States, have criticized as debt traps for smaller nations.
Ms. Meloni told Fox News on July 30 that her administration has not yet decided whether to leave the Chinese infrastructure scheme. Italy’s membership with the BRI is set to expire in March 2024 and will be automatically renewed if neither party withdraws.
Italy was the first Group of Seven (G7) member to join Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s BRI, against the advice of the United States and other G7 members. Former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed a BRI memorandum during Mr. Xi’s state visit in March 2019.
“The paradox with the BRI is we’re the only nation in G7 and European Union, but we are not the nation that has the best trade with China. That means you can have good relations with China without the BRI,” she said.
“But it’s something, in my opinion, has to be discussed with the Chinese government and inside the Italian parliament,” the Italian leader added. Ms. Meloni said that a decision would be made by the end of the year.
Italy’s upcoming presidency in the G7 was brought up during the interview, and Ms. Meloni said the European country would focus on efforts to enhance global supply chains and draw lessons from past mistakes in globalization.
“We thought that free commerce without rules could solve our problems, could distribute richness, and could democratize systems that were less democratic than ours. Didn’t happen,” Ms. Meloni remarked.
“And the second thing that happened was that systems that were not democratic involved on the institutional side and gained space in the world. Now they are stronger, and we are more weak for we don’t control our supply chains. So what we have to do is rethink,” she added.
Italy Made ‘Atrocious’ Decision
Ms. Meloni met with President Joe Biden at the White House on July 27, where the two leaders reaffirmed the “unshakable alliance, strategic partnership, and deep friendship” between the United States and Italy, the White House said.
Ms. Meloni said the two leaders discussed Italy’s participation in China’s BRI, but Washington’s approach was not to dictate Italy’s policy on China.
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto criticized the previous government’s decision to join the BRI as “improvised and atrocious,” which he said increased China’s exports to Italy but did not yield similar results for Italian exports to China.
“We have exported a load of oranges to China. They have tripled their exports to Italy in three years. The most ridiculous thing then was that Paris, without signing any treaties, in those days sold planes to Beijing for tens of billions,” he told the Corriere della Sera newspaper, according to an English translation.
Mr. Crosetto said the current concern is how Italy can pull out from the BRI without damaging its relations with Beijing “because it is true that China is a competitor but is also a partner.”
China is among the biggest markets for most countries in the G7 group, particularly for export-reliant economies such as Japan and Germany.
Since its launch in 2013, China’s BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road, has poured billions of dollars into infrastructure projects across Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia. In recent years, however, Beijing has been accused of using “debt-trap diplomacy” to lure many nations into its orbit.
Washington has repeatedly criticized the Chinese regime for expanding its geopolitical influence through predatory lending practices. BRI projects have raised the risk of economic distress in many borrower countries, including Sri Lanka, Montenegro, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, because of unsustainable loan levels and opaque contracts.
Emel Akan and Reuters contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
