The new liaison between Italy and China
The feeling after Giorgia Meloni’s trip to China is that a new phase in relations between Rome and Beijing has begun. After the failure of the “Belt and Road” project, it was crucial to renew the commercial partnership between the two countries and, on the other hand, to try to bring Xi Jinping into the Western bloc to initiate a concrete attempt at negotiation for peace in Ukraine. Whether the goals have been achieved will become clear later. What is certain is that the mission took place in a friendly and collaborative atmosphere. The “thaw” in dialogue, accompanied by a revitalization of commercial cooperation on the Rome-Shanghai route, could also provide the government with the opportunity to position itself in Brussels as a privileged interlocutor with China, a message implied by Meloni to President Xi Jinping during the long meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse.
Meloni wanted to demonstrate that leaving the Belt and Road Initiative will not harm cooperation with the Asian giant, but that business can be conducted better outside the BRI, as seen with France and Germany. “The trade balance in 2022, when we took office” explained the Prime Minister, “produced a deficit for Italy of 41 billion euros, so it clearly didn’t work. I have always said that Italy should exit the Belt and Road Initiative and that this would not compromise relations with China”.
The generally harmonious atmosphere, also highlighted by the Paris Olympics, which are captivating sports enthusiasts worldwide, has not, however, had any influence on the Middle East, where tensions are worryingly increasing. The events of recent days have rapidly dashed any hopes of a possible resumption of dialogue. Between Tuesday and Wednesday, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran under currently unclear circumstances; a Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, was eliminated in Beirut in an Israeli raid; and a pro-Iranian militia base in Iraq was attacked (three dead): actions not all claimed, but all initially attributed to Israel, supporting the words of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, “There is no place we cannot strike”. Hamas and Hezbollah have threatened retaliation, stating that the killings of Haniyeh and Shukr “will not go unpunished”.
These events mark yet another sharp escalation of tension in the region, already inflamed last weekend by an Israeli attack on a girls’ school housing refugees in Deir al-Balah, in the Gaza Strip, which resulted in around thirty casualties, and by the “soccer field massacre” on Sunday: 12 Druze children and teenagers playing soccer in Majdal Shams, a village in the Golan Heights occupied by Israel for nearly 60 years, lost their lives when a rocket struck them.
The tragic shadow of a widening Middle Eastern conflict looms over the summer.
