Thank you, good afternoon everyone.

I first of all wish to thank Premier Li Qiang for the warm welcome and his very important words.
We are holding the seventh edition of the Italy-China Business Forum today. I am very pleased to see so many representatives from leading Italian and Chinese organisations together here. 

This strong turnout clearly demonstrates the interest we all have in strengthening the partnership between Italy and China. To be successful in this, we need to be able to reflect on our strengths and our weaknesses, on what has worked well and what has worked less well, and I believe this is the place to do so, that this is a great opportunity to do so, with the common goal of making our trade relations increasingly fair and increasingly beneficial for all.

In my view, setting ourselves this goal is also the most concrete way to celebrate the two important anniversaries falling this year: the twentieth anniversary of our Global Strategic Partnership and the 700th anniversary of the death of Marco Polo, to whom we basically owe the deep foundations of the ties between our two peoples. 

The age-old relations between Italy and China are characterised by very significant economic and trade cooperation. We must continue to cultivate this strategic dimension, also and above all in the face of the complex international situation we find ourselves in. I am of course thinking of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle East, tensions in the Red Sea, and growing instability in Africa. 

Bringing into question the rules-based international order, all these crises inevitably also have repercussions on global security and economic integration. And these crises, together with the pandemic shock, have also made us face the side effects of globalisation, and the risks involved with having global supply chains. 

While it may be true that the world’s economy has benefited greatly from the liberalisation of trade, it is also true that the fruits of this process have not always been distributed on an equal basis; they have not been evenly distributed among nations, and they have not been evenly distributed among the various production factors within each nation.

We are being called upon to face this reality, as this all poses an objective risk in terms of economic security. In addition to increased geopolitical tensions, there is of course also a tendency towards geo-economic fragmentation and, in this already complex scenario, the emergence of disruptive technology also has an impact. As the Premier mentioned, there is the issue of generative artificial intelligence for example (we also talked about this during our fruitful discussion), which is bound to have a profound effect on both our social and our economic fabrics and completely change entire production sectors.

I know there is also a lively debate going on in China regarding what have been defined as ‘new productive forces’, I imagine referring to the impact of artificial intelligence on productivity and, I would like to add, on the creation and potential destruction of jobs too. Clearly, we are each developing our own approach, but I believe it is crucial to move beyond different perceptions and develop a common line of reasoning, precisely considering the implications artificial intelligence will have on the labour market, also for professions with a higher degree of specialisation.

It would be a mistake for us to ignore the growing risks of polarisation and of wealth becoming even more concentrated, not to mention those linked to humans losing control over decisions, which will instead be made by the machines that in the meantime are being used across a wide range of sectors, including in the medical, security and even military fields. Addressing these challenges clearly requires constructive and very transparent cooperation.

These elements, together with respect for the principles of reciprocity and equal conditions, have always been the keystone of relationships between nations. Now more than ever, unless we want to risk irreparably compromising peace and stability, we need an increasingly shared strategy, including in our economic and trade relations, based on decisions that are not harmful to each other and that follow a number of basic principles. These principles undoubtedly include fostering the ability to compete, making our economies and production and supply chains more shock-resistant, more diversified and able to generate technological innovations, without losing manufacturing capacity.

Unlocking the potential of the private sector, by facilitating its healthy growth, protected against subsidies that can sometimes distort competition, and also keeping in mind the need for proportionality to ensure that economic defence measures are in line with the actual level of risk and do not unintentionally restrict economic and commercial freedom, also at international level, as this principle is a hallmark of a democracy like Italy’s and of an open society like ours.

Clearly, our nation remains keen to cooperate, and it is of course key for us that our partners show they are genuinely cooperative and play by the rules, ensuring all companies can operate on international markets on an equal footing, because if we want a free market, that market inevitably also needs to be fair.

This approach also provides us with a historic opportunity to build a new cooperation model with players in the Global South, starting with Africa, which is a key partner for us as a Mediterranean nation. It also gives us the opportunity to show it is possible to collaborate in a fair, transparent and mutually beneficial way, because this is the only way to really cooperate long-term. Relations between Italy and China have generally been guided by these principles; our relations have proven to be solid and resilient despite the shocks of recent years.

Trade has increased, reaching approximately EUR 67 billion in 2023, and I believe there is still a lot of untapped potential, as we have discussed. We cannot hide the problem of a major imbalance, with a large deficit for Italy; this is a very important matter and we want to address it together, gradually moving towards an equilibrium.
In this regard, the Italian Government is of course ready to work together with the Chinese authorities and with the private sector. I firmly believe that dialogue on this issue, i.e., on improving conditions to access the Chinese market and protecting intellectual property, can have far more beneficial effects than we can imagine today.

Hence why I am so pleased to see so many leading companies here today that offer ‘Made in Italy’ goods and services; these are all about quality, creativity, tradition and identity, representing an incredibly powerful way to disseminate culture, know-how, traditions and innovation, all skilfully blended together and able to transcend eras and borders. Promoting, enhancing and safeguarding these examples of Italian excellence on foreign markets is a top priority for the Italian Government because, as I said to the Premier, Italy cannot compete in terms of product quantity, and nor does it intend to.

However, we also know that not many can compete with us when it comes to product quality, so excellence inevitably remains our primary goal, and our main strategy. In addition to our age-old cultures and histories, we also have an extraordinary drive towards new technologies, as can be seen by the fact that high added value sectors play the leading role in our trade relations.

I am thinking of pharmaceuticals, mechanical engineering and biomedicine; these sectors alone make up 40% of Italian exports to China. Strengthening economic cooperation also means encouraging both incoming and outgoing direct investments that are mutually beneficial, transparent and sustainable and that guarantee positive effects in terms of job creation, quality and development in the places they are being made. Attracting foreign investment is a way to fuel our nation’s economic growth and employment growth.

It is important that these are ‘good’ investments, and that means investments we can benefit from in terms of increased productivity and added value, allowing us to develop the managerial and technological skills and expertise we need to face the competition, and helping to generally bolster our companies’ cross-border presence by supporting effective partnership models with foreign companies, of course with transparent and verifiable industrial development plans.

When we talk about Italy and its manufacturing potential, we are talking about the country’s extraordinary entrepreneurial and value chain ecosystem. We are talking about more than 3,000 innovative small and medium-sized enterprises of excellence. In many sectors – just take the automotive industry for example -, we are one of the few nations able to offer supply chain capacity that ranges from design through to components and manufacturing. It is important that the Chinese business community is also aware of the comparative advantages, the rules of the Italian market and the fact it is now so dynamic and open to good investments. Also in this regard, there is important work we would like to do, and are trying to do, together, with the aim of rebalancing investments.

As you know, Italian enterprises are continuing to do their part in China; I shan’t go into specific examples, but I do want to highlight a simple fact: Chinese investments in Italy are currently around a third of Italian investments in China. We would like to bridge this gap in the right way, and I believe that doing so also represents an excellent opportunity for us.

Italy of course remains willing to listen to those wanting to produce, invest, share new industrial spaces and create jobs and wealth, just as our entrepreneurs have always done abroad. The connection between businesses, human resources and local areas has always been the key to our success. Today, we are working to ensure Italy is an increasingly competitive, fair and attractive destination for global enterprises, and the memorandum of understanding on industrial collaboration we have signed is a very significant step in this direction.
This now includes strategic industrial sectors such as electric mobility and renewables, which are also sectors in which China has been working on the cutting edge of technology for a long time, inevitably requiring it to act as a fully developed economy, as indeed it is, sharing new frontiers of knowledge also with partners. We are a solid economy, with a strategic positioning in Europe and in the Mediterranean. Our areas of excellence have always been our high level of research and innovation and the strength of our manufacturing system.

Today, we are also able to boast significant political stability, which is sometimes a rarity in our country, and this is another very important point, because political stability allows for strategy to be kept intact, and this is an added value for both those receiving investments and those investing in a nation.

I also don’t want to forget the economic value of the strategic tourism industry, which my Government will continue to support with great determination. It is also worth mentioning that, with both having such an extraordinary cultural heritage, Italy and China are head-to-head rivals in the ranking regarding who has the most UNESCO World Heritage sites.

As I thank you all once again, I would therefore also like to say in closing that I believe Italy and China still have a long way to go together, and I think it is up to us to chart the course, with determination, concreteness and mutual respect.
Thank you all, and I wish you all the best with your work at this Business Forum.

[Courtesy translation]