With PM's visit, China-Italy friendship flourishes

On Tuesday, one day before concluding her five-day official visit to China, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni stressed the importance of strengthening cooperation with China, stating that her visit coincides with the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo's death, which defines the depth of China-Italy relations.

The friendly exchanges between China and Italy have a long history. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of Italy in 1970, the two countries have learned from each other culturally and achieved mutual benefit and win-win cooperation. In 2004, the two countries established a comprehensive strategic partnership, while a series of important cooperation agreements were signed in 2019, including the memorandum of understanding on jointly promoting the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative.

China and Italy have strong complementarity in the fields of agricultural and food products, biomedicine and e-commerce, with bilateral trade exceeding $70 billion for three consecutive years. Italy is China's fourth largest trading partner in the European Union, ranking among the top tier EU countries in terms of the number of agreements signed for the export of agricultural products to China, while China is Italy's largest trading partner in Asia, and its market brings broad opportunities for Italian enterprises.

With the deepening of a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, China and Italy have made significant progress in cooperation in emerging fields such as environmental protection and digital economy. In April 2022, the Beleolico offshore wind power project located in the port of Taranto, Italy, with wind turbine equipment provided by China Mingyang Smart Energy Group and participation from multiple European companies, was officially connected to the grid, marking a breakthrough in green energy cooperation between China, Italy, and China and Europe. In addition, Antonio Majocchi, an international business professor at the LUISS University of Rome, Italy, used new energy vehicles as an example to say that China's new energy vehicles have strong competitiveness, and Italy has its own traditional advantages in automotive industry design.

The just-concluded Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China vowed to continue promoting high-level opening up, which will bring new opportunities for expanding cooperation with Italy and other countries. China is committed to creating a transparent, stable, and predictable institutional environment, further relaxing market access, providing more support and convenience for foreign enterprises to invest and develop in China. Meloni's visit to China continues the momentum of high-level interaction and sends a new positive signal for promoting pragmatic cooperation between China and Europe.

Maintaining the overall situation of pragmatic cooperation between China and Italy is of great and far-reaching significance for maintaining stable and healthy development of China-EU relations, promoting cultural exchanges and mutual learning between the East and the West, promoting world economic stability, and even maintaining world peace. As representatives of the two major civilizations, two major markets, and two major forces, China and Europe maintain close dialogue and pragmatic cooperation, which will minimize the risk of the world falling into factional confrontation.

Looking forward to the future, as long as China and Italy uphold and carry forward the spirit of the Silk Road and view and develop bilateral relations from the historical dimension, strategic height and long-term perspective, they will certainly promote the stability of bilateral relations, bring more benefits to the two peoples and make greater contributions to promoting global peace and development.

The author is director of China Daily New Media Center.