Institut für Sinologie Between Brussels, Washington and Beijing: Italy’s China policy in a changing international landscape

In March 2019, during Xi Jinping’s visit to Rome, Italy joined the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by signing an ad-hoc Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China. Less than five years later, in December 2023, the current Italian government announced the termination of the MoU, thus bringing the country out of the BRI. This decision did not mark a major discontinuity in Italy’s China policy, though, as Rome continued to invest on its relationship with Beijing. Most notably, this was demonstrated in 2024, when Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and President Sergio Mattarella visited China few months one after the other. What explains the apparently contradictory trajectory of Italy’s China policy? What are the constraints posed on subsequent Italian governments by a changing international landscape? And, more specifically, how is Rome coping with the growing US China rivalry and with an increasingly tense EU-China relationship?