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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni vowed to “relaunch” relations with China during her first visit to Beijing since taking office, announcing that she has signed a three-year plan to deepen cooperation.
After meeting Chinese premier Li Qiang on Sunday, Meloni said the trip demonstrated “the will to start a new phase.”
According to a statement released by Li’s office, the two countries aim to increase “mutually beneficial cooperation between small and medium-sized enterprises in the fields of shipbuilding, aerospace, new energy, artificial intelligence.”
Later on Sunday, the two leaders attended an Italy-China business forum where they announced six new agreements covering different fields, including electric vehicles and renewable energies.
“The Memorandum of Industrial Cooperation that we have signed is a significant step,” Meloni said at the forum. “It now includes strategic industrial sectors such as electric mobility and renewables, sectors where China has already been operating on the technological frontier for some time.”
Meloni’s five-day visit comes several months after Italy decided to drop out of China’s flagship global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
In 2019, Italy became the first G7 country to sign up to the BRI, raising concerns from the United States and other European countries as it might lead to China taking control of critical technology and infrastructure.
Meloni’s government, however, had long been critical of the BRI, which Meloni had described as “a big mistake.” It began talks with Beijing in 2023 to withdraw.
Italy, which is China’s fourth-largest trading partner in the European Union, remains keen to pursue a strong economic relationship with Beijing.
“Chinese investment in Italy is about a third of the level of Italian investments in China,” Meloni said during the forum. “It’s a gap that I’d like to see narrowed in the right way.”
