What effect will Giorgia Meloni’s visit have on Italy’s relations with China? And how does the resumption of trade agreements between Rome and Beijing fit into the hostility between China and the United States, on the eve of crucial presidential elections? Adnkronos asked Ashley Tellis, Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, one of the main global think tanks. Tellis has also been a senior consultant to the US State Department and is one of the leading experts on Asia.
“We need to start from the relationship between China and the United States to understand how Italy will manage its relationship with Beijing,” the expert begins. “The two great powers are on a competitive terrain and will remain on that terrain, whoever the next occupant of the White House is. Elements of style and management may change, depending on whether Trump or Harris wins the elections. He may be more unpredictable, she will tend to follow the manual drawn up by Joe Biden. But the issues at the center of the rivalry will be three: frontier technologies, military competition and the geopolitical/ideological area. On these fronts there will be no major changes starting in January 2025, when the new president takes office.”
On the Italian and European front, things have changed a lot since Italy signed the memorandum for the Belt and Road Initiative (2019) and the European Parliament was preparing to sign the investment treaty with China (2020), then put on hold with the arrival of Biden at the White House. “Europeans have now realized that China is a rival from an economic point of view,” continues Tellis. “Obviously it is also an ideological rival, when it comes to human rights, global order and international rules. In the long term, and this is now also perceived in European capitals, it could become a military rival.”
“Giorgia Meloni’s visit does not change this perspective – he reasons – She has made ‘tough’ decisions towards Beijing, such as leaving the BRI, and now she is trying to stabilize relations with Beijing. But I see her as much more protective of Italian interests than some of her predecessors. In the past, the field was left free to market dynamics, while she is ready to use the powers of the State to protect the production system and strategic Italian companies, in a way similar to the United States. There will not be a new and different relationship with China”.
What has also changed, Tellis points out, is China’s position towards the West: “The Chinese have been convinced for almost thirty years that the global order would guarantee them ever greater wealth and growth. Now they are realizing that this window of opportunity is closing rapidly, if it has not already closed completely. From Xi Jinping’s perspective, the world has become a much more hostile environment to the idea of unstoppable Chinese growth, of an uncontested role as a global productive power”.
“And yet, the government is still reluctant to change its strategy, which is mainly based on exports. And this is for a political reason: promoting growth and domestic demand means creating a new middle class, a class of entrepreneurs who would then start asking for political rights, a greater role in decisions that are currently centralized by the Communist Party. Therefore, the current leadership continues to focus on a growth strategy based on exports, which however presupposes the existence of markets ready to absorb this enormous industrial production. Traditional markets, Western ones, are now more closed to the Asian giant, so two paths are open: on the one hand, Chinese strategists will continue to deal with the West, with ever greater difficulty, to keep trade channels open, especially in the technology sector; on the other, they will focus on emerging economies. The problem is that these are much less developed markets, which cannot guarantee the growth rates observed in recent decades. Therefore, Beijing will have to deal with cascading effects on its entire economy, which is already suffering”, concludes Tellis.
(by Giorgio Rutelli)
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