China warns Italy against Belt and Road withdrawal
Tom Rogan
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Beijing has reacted with alarm to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s comment that President Joe Biden has not mentioned China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, to her.
Beijing’s Global Times propaganda newspaper argues that Meloni’s words suggest she is hiding something. The newspaper fears Meloni might use her trip to the White House on Thursday to cement U.S.-Italian relations at the BRI’s expense.
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That would be bad news for China.
After all, the BRI is a cornerstone of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s long-term economic strategy — a global project designed to boost China’s economic influence via joint infrastructure and trading projects. The European Union’s third-largest economy, Italy’s involvement in the BRI has lent diplomatic prestige to the arrangement. But Italy must decide by March 2024 whether to agree to a five-year extension of the BRI or to leave it altogether. Meloni, who has previously expressed concern over China’s foreign policy, has hinted that she’ll choose the latter option.
Withdrawal would be the right course of action. The BRI is ultimately a Chinese Communist Party Ponzi scheme designed to ensure the economic and political fealty of sovereign nations by enmeshing them in a web of dependence on Chinese trade. Predictably, the Chinese have benefited far more from the BRI than the Italians. Italian government data show that between 2019 and 2022, China boosted its exports to Italy nearly twice as much as Italy boosted its exports to China. Beijing is actively using the BRI to leverage the political obedience of developing nations in return for its patience on repayments of their China debt obligations.
Beijing barely cares to hide the political context in which it pursues economic relations. The Global Times emphasized as much, warning that “if Italy moves to follow the strategic direction of the U.S., it will hurt its own interests, and it may end up harming its autonomy in foreign relations.”
Note here the reference to “autonomy,” a play to French President Emmanuel Macron’s “strategic autonomy” doctrine for the European Union. China loves that doctrine, seeing it as a key means of degrading the trans-Atlantic alliance. Macron knows as much, using China’s affection for his rhetorical games to extract investment and trade deals for France.
Regardless, the Global Times wants Meloni to understand that her withdrawal from the BRI will result in retaliation. It notes how “Meloni has said on different occasions that Italy can have excellent relations with China even without being part of a strategic pact. Nonetheless, the potential impact is worrying. If Italy decides to withdraw from a platform that demonstrated mutual political trust and improved the strategic level of cooperation between the two countries, there is every reason to be concerned about the potential negative impact.”
It doesn’t take a genius to know what China is saying here: If you leave the BRI, we will punish you.
If Italy does pull out of the BRI, the United States should be ready to provide Italy with new economic incentives. Beijing cannot be allowed to cajole longstanding U.S. allies into conformity with its global agenda. That agenda aims to subordinate the U.S. and its democratic values to the whims of a globally supreme CCP.