Mattarella with Wang Yi? I’m critical, that’s why. Speak the prof. Pelanda
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, received the head of diplomacy of the Chinese Communist Party, Wang Yi, last Friday. The analysis of Carlo Pelanda, analyst, essayist and professor of economic geopolitics
Last Friday at Palazzo del Quirinale the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, received the head of diplomacy of the Communist Party of China, Wang Yi, an event that had wide resonance in both the Italian and Chinese media, happy to highlight the solemn welcome reserved for Wang.
For these same reasons, the meeting raised some eyebrows in Italy, where the asymmetry between the two interlocutors was not failed to be noted. On this anomaly Start Magazine heard the opinion of Carlo Pelanda, analyst, essayist and professor of economic geopolitics at the Guglielmo Marconi University, author not by chance of an explicitly critical article.
Let's talk about this interview at the Quirinale with Wang Yi, how do you judge it?
I am puzzled. The institutional asymmetry in bringing a head of state and a party official together around a table is too evident. Wang Yi is not the Foreign Minister, even if he was, and has now been transferred to the Central Committee of the Party for the responsibility of Foreign Affairs: it is certainly an important position because he is Xi Jinping's direct adviser. But formally – and in diplomacy form is substance – he remains a party official. It is therefore a smudge too obvious not to be detected.
What betrays this asymmetry?
Certainly some sort of failure. When such formal recognitions are made, then one considers oneself to be in an inferior position. The question is whether the Quirinale was right or wrong in carrying out this type of operation. Bad in my opinion, because there is an important effort by Beijing to open a new diplomatic phase to remedy a series of errors and above all the hostility it has created in the world. But before granting this recognition publicly, conditions must be set, because Beijing has hostile and aggressive behavior that cannot be compensated for with the skilful action of a consummate diplomat like Wang.
In terms of communication, it was an absolute victory for Beijing, judging at least by the mass of articles in the press and on the web where there was a great deal of repetition of Wang's statements such as the one in which it is underlined verbatim that "China and Italy are natural partners in joint construction of the Belt and Road” Is that right?
Certainly. A whole series of rules of strategic thinking have been violated. It must be said, among other things, that the diplomatic advisors of the Quirinale know these things, and so we have to ask ourselves: why did they make this mistake? I don't have a single answer here but I can try to imagine.
Let's try.
First point: is there a competition with France and Germany to have good trade relations with China? Yes, but Germany is forced to do it because it is being blackmailed, in the sense that its industry depends very much on Beijing; France for its part plays a game of its own at an international level which is dangerous. So pursuing Germany which is being blackmailed and France which has its own anomalous way of moving internationally is certainly a danger for Italy. The right thing would have been to do something different from France and Germany, while the Quirinale seems to have wanted to compete for subjection to China.
From what can this subjection be inferred?
From the fact that, just when the US was publicly admonishing not to give military support to Russia, our President of the Republic was saying that we must collaborate with China for peace. Let's say that Italy has fallen into that typically Chinese strategy of the slow trap: first I'll lock you into an apparently neutral statement from which you can't back out and then I'll take you where I want. Beijing wants to get Italy to join the chorus of idiots calling for China to play a mediator to end the war in Ukraine: something that makes no sense because Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if he had not been given the green light by Beijing. China, on the other hand, should be told that it should tell its ally to calm down, otherwise it will end up being involved in the mechanism of secondary sanctions, which is exactly the message that the US is sending out right now.
In Washington, therefore, they will not have taken the meeting at the Quirinale very well.
Actually the Americans understand our position. They know that Italy will not renew the agreement with China on the Silk Road. They also know that Italy participates in the US-led blockade that wants to deny China access to a whole range of advanced technologies and they know that Italy has embarked on a remediation of toxic relations with Beijing. So there isn't a very strong concern, I would rather say that there is amazement. Probably in Washington they realize that Italy must somehow take account of the Vatican, which has a very accommodating position on China. The fact remains that Italy has not made a good impression and this weakens it.
Among other things, the Quirinale risked triggering a conflict with an executive like that of Giorgia Meloni who has very distant positions on China.
Since the mistake made by the Quirinale is so evident, one has to wonder if the Quirinale is taking an action contrary to the government or if instead it is trying in some way to diplomatically mitigate the fact that Italy will not sign the renewal of the Memorandum on the Silk Road. Naturally we don't know this, but it's all so anomalous that one might wonder if it was the government that asked the Quirinale to play the part game. In this way, however, we have until November to decide how to deal with that unfortunate Memorandum, declassifying the agreements to a normal level between enemy countries and therefore limiting ourselves to a series of sectoral agreements that do not have too much impact on the Italian economy.
Almost four years have passed since the signing of that Memorandum. What did he produce in a nutshell?
Nothing, except for the fact that it gave a nominal umbrella for some Chinese penetration operations in Italy which took place through corruption, blackmail, capital injections for strategic purposes. And it is clear that this umbrella is important because it protects Chinese penetration from a series of institutional actions of contrast which, however, as I recalled, took the form of reclamation initiatives. The Meloni government is therefore now called to balance this necessary contrasting action with the opportunity not to completely compromise relations with China.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/mattarella-con-wang-yi-sono-critico-ecco-perche-parla-il-prof-pelanda/ on Tue, 21 Feb 2023 07:57:05 +0000.