While Italy is called to preside over the most advanced economies of the world, the CCP continues targeting it as one of its most important centers of operation.
by Marco Respinti
For the whole year 2024, Italy will hold the pro tempore presidency of the so-called G7, or the intergovernmental forum of the most advanced economies of the world, according to the International Monetary Fund. They are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, plus the European Union (EU) as a “non-enumerated member.” G7 was called G8 when the Russian Federation (now suspended) was also included. The countries grouped in G7 are also part of the G20, or the most advanced world economies among both the industrialized and the developing countries. Of course, they go beyond the focus of “Bitter Winter,” but G7, G8, and G20 prompt some considerations here for at least two reasons.
The first is that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a member of the G20. The PRC is a non-democratic country, and the democratic countries of G7 need to constantly face this situation. The second build on the first: Italy holds the presidency of G7 in 2024. Italy is the first major Western power to have joined, in 2019, President Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) as well as the first in the globe to have withdrawn from it. Announced in the late 2023, Italy’s decision to withdraw was officially formalized on December 6, 2023. One can easily imagine that a post-BRI Italy presiding G7 could be one of the subjects worth discussing at the next G7 summit, hosted by the Italian government on June 13‒15. This is still not the focus of “Bitter Winter” per se, but its bearing on those fundamental liberties that are the material of religious freedom and human rights is.
Take for example the display of power that the PRC has staged in Italy during the recent Chinese New Year Day, on February 10, at least in two major Italian cities. As every year, the date was celebrated by Chinese all around the country but in Rome and in Florence the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) exploited the occasion for yet some more blatant propaganda, orchestrated by the Chinese Embassy, consulates, and the Italy-China Institute.
Within the performances and frolics that customarily accompany these colorful events, in Florence the program included the screening of a video featuring the People’ Liberation Army (PLA), or the armed force of the PRC. In Rome, under the banner of “cultural exchange,” copies of one of the books by Xi Jinping, in Chinese, were up for grab.
The PRC is a totalitarian country with no free elections, no rule of law, and no pluralism, which proudly exalts an ideology which caused the worse human-made tragedies in history. Its miserable records on human rights are under scrutiny worldwide. Documented reports on the repressive nature of the Chinese regime multiply, and parliaments and governments of the world officially acknowledge it. Even the UN and its agencies, through slow in action and quite shy in judgment, cannot refrain from censoring China. China is not a democratic country, and until it will torment, torture, and put to death its citizens it should not be allowed to impose its arrogance on other democratic countries, pressing upon foreign nationals and daunting Chinese people abroad.
The PLA, which was on screen in Florence, is in fact the same deadly military machine that was employed for so many repressive actions throughout PRC’s history. It is the same army that crushed in blood the pacific Tiananmen protest in June 1989. It is the same that invaded and still occupies Tibet. It is the same that threatens the Republic of China (Taiwan). As to Xi Jinping, whose face smiles from the candid white cover of the book distributed in Rome, he is a tyrant and the ultimate responsible for all the violations and violence exerted on innocent people that “Bitter Winter” among several other media document every single day. He is the man who keeps 1,412 billion people (2021 World Bank estimates) under his heel and orders to intimidate the diaspora of those Chinese citizens who were lucky enough to escape the country.
History records that diplomatic incidents happened for much less than what Italians and Chinese could see on February 10, yet no reaction followed the magnification of a totalitarian regime and his leader, a man who instructed the executors of his order to have “absolutely no mercy” for the people of Xinjiang (which its non-Han inhabitants call East Turkestan), torments ethnic and religious groups, allows DNA profiling, unlawful detentions, torture, forced sterilizations, organ harvesting and other nefarious practices, among which the numbers of the death penalty inflicted yearly to an incredible amount of people whose number remain a state secret.
The most serious aspect of what happened on the Chinese New Year Day in 2024 in Italy is that it squashed the image of the Chinese people on that of Xi Jinping’s totalitarianism, propagating the idea that there is no China outside the brutal rule of the CCP. It also surreptitiously added that Italy may have left BRI, but the CCP is there to stay.
A sign of the concrete power that the CCP holds in Italy, beyond signed or ended treaties and agreements, is the mystery of the Chinese police stations that have been discovered in the country, frozen in a limbo and awaiting to be fully clarified. Another is the unstoppable growth of the Confucius Institutes. Under the guise of public educational and cultural promotion programs, funded and arranged by the Chinese International Education Foundation on behalf of the PRC’s Ministry of Education, that is just another long arm of the Chinese regime, especially appropriate for democratic countries.
An important number of institutions belonging to the Confucius Institute network have been established in several Italian centers, while Confucius classrooms operates within many secondary education institutions of the country. The latest Institute was established in Arezzo, Tuscany, on February 28, and a full list of these facilities (see appendix) gives an impressive idea of the magnitude of this operation.
In the Chinese calendar, the year 2024 with Italy presiding G7 is the Year of the Dragon. In Italy, some are at work to make it another Year of the CCP, the Red Dragon.
APPENDIX
– Confucius Institutes and Classrooms in Italian Universities
La Sapienza, Istituto Confucio, Rome
Università degli Studi di Milano, Istituto Confucio, Milan
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Istituto Confucio, Milan
Università degli Studi di Firenze, Istituto Confucio Firenze, Florence
Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Istituto Confucio di Pisa, Pisa
Istituto Confucio Università di Bologna, Bologna
Istituto Confucio Università di Padova, Padova
Università degli studi di Torino, Istituto Confucio, Turin
Istituto Confucio presso l’Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Venice
Università degli studi di Napoli L’Orientale Istituto Confucio, Naples
Istituto Confucio Università di Macerata, Macerate
Istituto Confucio Università Kore di Enna, Enna
Università degli studi di Cagliari, Aula Confucio, Cagliari
Università degli studi della Tuscia, Aula Confucio, Viterbo
Università degli studi di Urbino “Carlo Bo,” Aula Confucio, Urbino
Aula Confucio, Università di Milano-Bicocca, Milan
La Sala Confucio dell’Università per Stranieri di Siena, Siena
Aula Confucio Università di Siena, Campus di Arezzo, Arezzo
– Confucius Classrooms in High Schools in Italy
Aula Confucio dell’ITIS “G. Dorso” Avellino
Aula Confucio del Liceo Statale “Pimentel Fonseca” Napoli
Aula Confucio dell’IPSSAR “Esposito Ferraioli” Napoli
Aula Confucio del Liceo Classic Perito-Levi, Eboli
Aula Confucio della Scuola Primaria Bilingue di Benevento
Aula Confucio del Convitto Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele II” Roma
Convitto Nazionale “Amedeo di Savoia, Duca d’Aosta” di Tivoli
Liceo Classico Statale “F. Capece,” Maglie
Liceo Classico-Linguistico “G. Leopardi” di Macerata
Liceo Classico Statale “G. Leopardi” di Recanati
Liceo “Saffo” di Roseto degli Abruzzi
Aula Confucio del Convitto Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele II” Arezzo
Aula Confucio del Liceo Scientifico “Enrico Fermi” Bologna
Aula Confucio del Liceo Ginnasio “Luigi Galvani” di Bologna
Aula Confucio del Liceo Malpighi Bologna
Aula Confucio del Kinder College Bologna
Aula Confucio dell’Educandato “Collegio Uccellis” Udine
Aula Confucio del Liceo “Antonio Pigafetta” Vicenza
Aula Confucio dell’Istituto “Aleardo Aleardi” Verona
Aula Confucio dell’ITES “Luigi Einaudi” Verona
Aula Confucio dell’I.I.S. A. Lunardi, Brescia
Aula Confucio dell’Istituto Tecnico Economico Enrico Tosi, Busto Arsizio
Aula Confucio dell’I.I.S. Don Milani Montichiari
Aula Confucio dell’Istituto Marcelline Tommaseo Milano
Aula Confucio dell’Istituto Tecnico Statale “Luca Pacioli” Crema
Aula Confucio dell’Istituto d’Istruzione Superiore “L. Cremona” Milano
Civico Liceo Linguistico Alessandro Manzoni Milano
Aula Confucio della Scuola Internazionale Europea “Altiero Spinelli” – Istituto Confucio dell’Università di Torino
Aula Confucio del Convitto Nazionale Umberto I – Istituto Confucio dell’Università di Torino
Aula Confucio dell’Istituto “Maria Ausiliatrice” – Istituto Confucio dell’Università di Torino
Aula Confucio del Liceo Linguistico “Grazia Deledda” di Genova – Istituto Confucio dell’Università di Torino
Aula Confucio del Liceo “Carlo Botta” di Ivrea – Istituto Confucio dell’Università di Torino
Classe Confucio del Liceo Statale Antonio Rosmini Grosseto
Classe Confucio di I.I.S.S. “A. Pesenti “- Cascina
Aula Confucio del Liceo “Machiavelli Capponi” Firenze
Classe Confucio “G. Carducci” – Ferrara
Classe Confucio “E. De Amicis” – Rovigo
Aula Confucio del Liceo e Convitto Nazionale “Marco Foscarini” Venezia
Aula Confucio dell’Istituto Statale d’Istruzione Superiore “Dante Alighieri” Gorizia