Italy has decided to exit China’s Belt and Road Initiative after just four years of alignment, a milestone reversal that points to growing Western wariness of Beijing’s economic influence in leading democratic economies.
"We have seen that [it] has not had the desired results and indeed those countries who have not taken part have had better results,” Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani said Wednesday in Rome.
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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government gave formal notice this week of their decision not to renew their participation when the initial agreement expires next year. That quiet withdrawal set the stage for China’s hosting of a summit with European Union leaders who have taken a more risk-averse posture towards Beijing over the last year.
"If the EU, on the one hand, imposes harsh restrictions on high-tech exports, and on the other hopes to sharply increase exports to China, that I'm afraid doesn't make sense," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday, adding that “if China and Europe choose to be inclusive and win-win, there will be hope for global development and prosperity.”
Such statements ring hollow in more and more European capitals, replaced by a distrustful sense that Western societies need to avoid the kinds of economic relationships that might give critical leverage to Beijing in the event of a political crisis.
“There is now an official G7 policy called de-risking,” former Italian Ambassador Stefano Stefanini told the Financial Times. “The U.S. had made it clear to the present Italian government that participation was incompatible with Italy’s position in the G7.”
Italy joined the Belt and Road Initiative in 2019, despite United States warnings that Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping’s vaunted overseas investment program is little more than a “predatory” lending scheme designed to give Beijing control of strategic infrastructure. A year later, the coronavirus pandemic broke upon the world.
The frustration over Beijing’s lack of transparency about the emergence of the virus turned Western public opinion sharply against the regime, setting a political predicate for diplomatic relations to be dominated by disputes about communist atrocities against Uyghur Muslims, China’s ominous claims to sovereignty over Taiwan and most of the South China, and Beijing’s support for Russia in its war against Ukraine.
“The decision to join the [Belt and Road Initiative] was an improvised and atrocious act,” Italian defense minister Guido Crosetto said last year. “The issue today is how to walk back [from the BRI] without damaging relations [with Beijing]. Because it is true that China is a competitor, but it is also a partner.”
European officials have treated China as “a partner for cooperation and negotiation, an economic competitor and a systemic rival,” but the balance of those three prongs has grown more difficult to maintain.
“It is worrying to see, for example, that we have a trade deficit of 400 billion euros, and it's one that has been growing over the last decade,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Hudson Institute during a recent trip to Washington. “You have to analyze where the weaknesses or the risks are under the concept of derisk, not decouple…and [the] typical example is our dependency on critical raw materials on China. China, in the last 20 to 30 years, has strategically bought the mines of critical raw materials, takes the product, processes it in China, has basically a monopoly on it. And if you see some critical raw materials, the higher dependence of the European Union on the Chinese product, it is telling enough.”
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Tajani sought to thread that needle by stipulating that the 2019 deal “has not had the desired results and indeed those countries who have not taken part have had better results” — an apparent suggestion that Italy has taken excessive criticism for joining the Belt and Road Initiative, in comparison to other countries that did not and yet have major economic ties to China.
“Non-participation in the Silk Road does not represent a negative act towards China,” he said at the Adnkronos forum. “Relations continue to be excellent, even though China is one of our competitors at global level.”