- Italian premier makes first China trip since coming to power
- Tit-for-tat measures between EU, China raise fear of trade war
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offered to broker better trade relations between China and the European Union, calling on President Xi Jinping to “balance out” commercial relations between the bloc and the world’s second-biggest economy.
“Italy can have an important role in EU relations and creating balanced relations,” Meloni said Monday in her first official visit to China since coming to power in 2022. “We need a rules-based order” as a way “to guarantee stability, peace, trade that remains free,” she said.
As she sat for talks with President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called China an “important interlocutor” of the world.
Meloni is on a visit to China where she has sought to reset Italy’s bilateral relationship with the country. The visit comes months after she pulled Italy out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Earlier on Sunday, she met Premier Li Qiang and the two signed a three-year economic agreement. She said the visit would “relaunch our bilateral cooperation”.
A day after she met Li, Meloni on Monday sat with President Xi for talks at Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, according to AFP.
Meloni told Xi that the two countries must think together as to how to guarantee stability and peace in the world.
In her talks with Xi, Meloni said that there is growing insecurity at the international level and it should be a top priority to keep the rules-based order stable.
“There is growing insecurity at an international level and I think that China is inevitably a very important interlocutor to address all these dynamics…Above all we need the system of rules in which we operate to remain stable,” said Meloni.
