During the PM’s visit to China promoting Italian economy and industry, not a single public word on the crimes of President Xi’s regime has been heard. An open letter.
by Marco Respinti
Dear President Giorgia Meloni:
Your recent trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), July 26–31, visiting Beijing and Shanghai, promoting partnerships and joint-ventures, and inaugurating an exhibition dedicated to our compatriot, the great Venetian explorer Marco Polo (1254–1324), has been a success. As an Italian citizen, I am glad of it.
You firmly confronted President Xi Jinping, Premier of the State Council Li Qiang, and other national and local leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), always advancing the case for an enlightened development of the economic and industrial collaboration between Italy and the PRC with no sign of submission to the gigantic power of Beijing. It was a great opportunity to advance your lucid policy that aims at promoting the Italian national interest in the world and crediting Italy as a serious and reliable partner or interlocutor in all relevant fields of the international scenario.
One of the fullest moments of your official state visit—all available on the web to peruse—was when you brilliantly spoke as a leader of the free world by clearly telling President Xi that the PRC has nothing to gain from supporting the industrial production of the Russian Federation.
It was a crucial statement. In fact, supporting Russian industrial production means directly helping Russia in all that it does. Industrial production is pivotal for any country of the world, rich or poor, powerful or weak. The nation that supports another in its industrial production is an open supporter of that country and of whatever it does internally and externally. So, your words to the PRC’s top leaders on the necessity to immediately severe ties with Russia meant that the PRC needs to stop supporting President Vladimir Putin and his nomenklatura in all that they do internally and externally—i.e., their blatant crimes. It was a visionary statement that goes to your credit, President Meloni, as the international leader that you are.
I also think that you used the correct approach on the Russian issue. Saying the PRC has nothing to gain by supporting Russia is in fact speaking the language that Beijing perfectly understands—actually, quite the only language that Beijing understands and speaks, in whatever tongue its utterances would be. The PRC applies the crudest and cruelest form of Marxist-Leninist approach to reality and only thinks in materialistic terms. What benefits its power, is good; what doesn’t, is bad, according to its neo-Orwellian mentality reminiscent of the totalitarian regime established by the character of Napoleon, the pig leader of George Orwell’s (Eric Blair, 1903‒1950) 1945 “Animal Farm.”
Thus, if the PRC sees ties with Russia as uneconomical, i.e., not useful for enlarging its power, it will gradually start pulling out. The world needs then just to make it uneconomical for the PRC to support Russia. It is here that your five-days trip to the totalitarian PRC peaked.
You, President Meloni, tried your best to position Italy in the highest role within any economic partnership with the PRC that, of course with the contribution of other international partners, will make it more convenient for Beijing to abandon Moscow and look for ties with the democratic world. If this happens, your name will be remembered as that of a major role-player in the deep contemporary multifaced international crises. You would be saluted as she who stopped the strategic liaison Beijing-Moscow that continues frustrating freedom around the world, killing innocents in Ukraine, and arm those who are nothing less than terrorists and criminals in many crisis areas of the globe.
It is also here, though, that the words you addressed to the PRC’s leadership on the Russian case applies also to you own, and mine, country—Italy.
The nation that supports the industrial production of Russia is supporting the crimes of Russia, as the nation that supports the industrial production of the PRC is supporting the crimes of the PRC. The crimes against humanity of the PRC, President Meloni, are legion. You know it. The fate of millions of people within the boundaries of the PRC speak for it, daily. Chinese citizens, believers in a whole range of religions, and people from a large variety of ethnic groups equally suffer heinous violence. This goes from unlawful imprisonment to internment in slave labor and re-education camps; from extrajudicial killings and unexplained murders in custody to the annual toll of death sentences that make any other rogue state pale by far; from the forcible depredation of organs of prisoners of conscience to rape and sterilization of women to forced abortions for ideological reasons; from torture and harassment to the psychological brutality and vilifying surveillance; from the denial of the most basic rights to police repression in the streets and militarization of cities and villages. And the exemplary case of Hong Kong illustrates well the will of power with which the neo-post-national-communist Chinese regime threatens others, starting from the Republic of China in Taiwan, and infiltrates many countries, governments, free institutions, media and influential milieus all over the world, even physically menacing the diasporas of those who fled the PRC in search of freedom or establishing “police stations” abroad, Italy included. Human rights violations, crimes, and cultural genocides are the real name of the PRC and its ruling party, the CCP.
The promotion of the Italian interests is sacrosanct but needs to start from here. It cannot be otherwise. Human dignity, freedom, respect for the basic personal liberties of all and the rule of law need always to be the lighthouse of the domestic and foreign policy of a nation. Italy’s authority and history looms large here. National interest must always be sought and promoted, but the first national interest is human beings. All advantages of a nation in all fields are legitimately pursued because they benefit human beings. The rest derives from this.
The better positioning of Italy in the economic scenario of the world cannot be sought and achieved at the cost of supporting the industrial production of the PRC. In fact, like the nations that support the industrial production of Russia are supporting the crimes of Russia, as you implied during your visit in the PRC talking to Chinese leaders, so the nations that support the industrial production of the PRC are supporting the crimes of the PRC. Of course, Italy does not want and cannot be one of these nations. I genuinely wonder whether this can be counted among the results of your visit to the PRC.
Is Italy supporting the industrial production of the PRC?
For the reasons stated above, this is the question of all questions. Your leadership was brave and tough in pulling Italy out in December 2023 of the shameful “Memorandum of Understanding” that a previous Italian government ill-advisedly signed, delivering a blank political check in the hands of the totalitarian government of the CPP. That was a high signal: under your leadership, Italy is the first country in the world to have exited the suffocating and threatening so-called “Belt and Road Initiative,” just like it had been the first major country in the West to enter it. This went in the direction of stopping supporting the industrial production of the PRC, which meant stopping supporting the crimes of the PRC. But then other disturbing things happened: for example, Italy’s appalling support of industrial production of the PRC that was revealed by the import of a monstrous quantity of agricultural products coming from slave labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
Before that, in February 2024, Italy, and Germany, tried to block the adoption of a European Union directive that, imitating precedents from other countries, first of all the Unites States of America, would have prohibited the import of goods from slave labor. At the moment of the vote, Italy, and Germany, did abstain, which was equivalent to vote “no.” Reasonable economic reasons for Italian companies were advanced to explain that policy, and all reasonable persons cannot ignore them.
Yet, the question of questions remains. In promoting Italian economic interests and remaining silent on China’s structural misdeeds, is Italy supporting the PRC’s industrial production and crimes? Because that would be equal to the PRC supporting the crimes of Russia by supporting Russia’ industrial production, as you rightly reminded the Beijing leaders. During your visit to the PRC, all people in the world, including in Italy and the PRC, have not heard one single public word of yours on the many unbearable crimes of President Xi’s regime‒that continued during jour sojourn there, as they preceded and will follow your trip. The question remains. Where does Italy stand on the issue of Chinese crimes against humanity?
