PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Rome

Wang Yi and Luigi Di Maio

Rome [ENA] The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China, State Councilor Wang Yi, today began his tour of the main capitals of the European Union starting from Rome. After a confidential meeting with the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio, the State Councilor Wang Yi made statements to the press invited and answered the questions put by two Italian journalists (ANSA and Rai 3)

https://youtu.be/0BTecI2mZbc and by two Chinese journalists . The People's Republic of China hopes relations with Italy and the European Union are more and more strengthened in order to promote economic exchanges and to respond to the COVID19 pandemic in a multilateral manner. Further, the two ministers hoped that a vaccine against Covid19 available to everybody be discovered and commercialized as soon as possible. In a historical moment in which a "cold war" atmosphere has returned, the People's Republic of China will ask the European Union to act jointly to safeguard cooperation for peace, stability and economic development in the world.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi

The Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs reiterated the long-standing friendship that binds Italy to the PRC, but also stressed that Italy has its natural and inalienable place, assigned to it by history, in the Atlantic Alliance and in the European Union. Di Maio also highlighted the Italian and EU position on Hong Kong. During the morning, SNAM signed an agreement for the exploitation of biomethane and natural gas. The relations between the governments of Italy and China are virtuous and this is encouraging. But for what concerns the trade Italy is doing very badly.

Italian companies are unable to penetrate the Chinese market. And there are many reasons highlighted for some time. In July, Di Maio and Wang had a videoconference on the relaunch of the economic partnership and on the export of the so called “Flag of Italy” agri-food products, according to what the Farnesina reported via Twitter. Today was certainly an opportunity to reopen old dossiers, even if there was no public mention of Huawei’s 5G. The Italian security services and the United States have opposed Huawei's 5G network due to problems related to cybersecurity that seem to give too many advantages to the Chinese counterpart. https://youtu.be/4N1m-3PQurk