Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the project did not produce the results that were expected.
Italy is pulling out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), delivering a major blow to the communist regime’s ambitious project.
Italy was the only member of the Group of 7 leading economic powers to have joined the trillion-dollar project, which Chinese leader Xi Jinping launched a decade ago to expand the regime’s geopolitical influence through infrastructure investment.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni confirmed the exit from the Chinese project on Thursday.
“I think that we should ... improve our cooperation with China on trade, the economy,” Ms. Meloni told reporters in her first public comments on the issue since reports that Rome was communicating with Beijing about the decision, according to
Reuters.
“The tool of the (BRI) ... has not produced the results that were expected,” she added.
The BRI memorandum of understanding between Rome and Beijing was valid until March 2024. Italy had to decide before the end of this year whether it opted to end the agreement. Otherwise, the deal would be automatically renewed for another five years.
Reports emerged on Wednesday that Ms. Meloni’s government had informed the Chinese authorities that it would officially withdraw from the pact.
According to local media
Corriere della Sera, a formal notice was delivered to the Chinese embassy in Italy earlier this month without an official announcement.
At Thursday’s briefing, when asked about Rome’s formal departure from the BRI project, China’s foreign ministry didn’t deny or confirm it, but
said the project has “enormous appeal and global influence.”
Without naming Italy, the ministry’s spokesperson Wang Wenbin told reporters that the Chinese regime “firmly opposes attempts to smear and sabotage Belt and Road cooperation or stoke bloc confrontation and division.”
‘Big Mistake’
Mr. Xi launched the BRI shortly after he took power in late 2012. The regime has since distributed
over 1 trillion dollars in loans and other funds for the construction of railways, ports, power plants, and other vital infrastructure across Southeast Asia, Africa, and Europe. Most of these loans were handed out to low and middle-income countries.
In 2019, then-Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte
signed the BRI memorandum when Mr. Xi visited Rome, despite opposition from Washington and Brussels. The deal even met criticism from Mr. Conte’s own coalition government, as officials are concerned that Chinese investment could be a “Trojan horse” to undermine the country’s economy.
Mr. Conte hoped the involvement in the BRI project would increase trade with China and boost Italy’s economy, which was tipped into
recession at that time.
“We want to first and foremost rebalance our trade, which is not favorable to us now. Our exports to China are far lower than other European countries,” Mr. Conte told lawmakers before signing the agreement with Mr. Xi.
Contrary to expectations, Chinese companies still benefit more from bilateral trade. Italy’s exports to China only increased slightly, from $14 billion in 2019 to $17.7 billion in 2022,
Italian data showed. China’s exports to Italy, however, nearly doubled, rising to $61.9 billion from $34.1 billion over the same period.
Ms. Meloni sharply criticized the government’s decision to embrace the BRI project during the electoral campaign last year. In an interview with Taiwan’s official news agency
CNA, in September 2022, Ms. Meloni described Mr. Conte’s agreement with the regime as “a big mistake.”
Since taking into office last October, Ms. Meloni and her right-wing government have repeatedly signaled the intention to leave BRI, citing benefits fall short of expectations.
Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said on Wednesday that China’s infrastructure program is “not one of our priorities.”
The Chinese project “has not had the desired results and indeed those countries who have not taken part have had better results,” Mr.Tajani, also Italy’s deputy prime minister, said in an event held by Italian news agency
Adnkronos in Rome. He added that the withdrawal from BRI won’t harm the relationship with China.
Growing Skepticism
Mr. Xi has once hailed the BRI as “a project of the century.” But a decade after its inception, the BRI continues to be met with growing skepticism in the West.
Critics have called the scheme “debt trap diplomacy,” as it burdened smaller nations with unsustainable debt obligations. An example is Sri Lanka, which
handed over the rights of a strategic Hambantota Port to the Chinese regime in a 99-year lease in 2017 due to massive Chinese loans that the government found itself unable to repay.
Leaders of the G-7 have
unveiled a global infrastructure program as its answer to the regime’s controversial BRI.
At the forum, Mr. Xi depicted his BRI project as a global platform for cooperation and prosperity, celebrating the project’s 10th anniversary in Beijing earlier this year.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, one of several high-profile guests attending the forum, praised the BRI for its claimed role in creating “a fairer, multi-polar world.”
Notably, this year’s BRI forum brought only one leader from a European Union nation — Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In comparison, the 2019 gathering counted seven EU nation chiefs.
