At the start of her five-day visit, Ms. Meloni met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and inked a three-year plan to increase economic cooperation between the two countries.
It follows Ms. Meloni’s decision to withdraw her nation from President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) last year.
Rome claimed that Italy would not benefit from the big Chinese investment initiative at the time.
“Demonstration of the will to begin a new phase and to relaunch our bilateral cooperation” was how Ms. Meloni characterized her trip.
She added that the two nations had inked a deal intended to strengthen cooperation on it.
Premier Li stated in an office statement that the two nations want to see more “mutually beneficial cooperation between small and medium-sized enterprises in the fields of shipbuilding, aerospace, new energy, and artificial intelligence.”
One of China’s most ambitious trade and infrastructure initiatives, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), only had one significant Western signatory: Italy.
At the time, the United States and a few other powerful Western nations strongly criticized the action.
Ms. Meloni has worked to steer a foreign policy that is more pro-Western and pro-NATO than that of her predecessors since taking office in 2022.
