China has lambasted what is called the “smearing” of its Belt and Road infrastructure project, launched in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“China firmly opposes smearing and undermining of cooperation on the joint construction of the Belt and Road,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a briefing.
The remarks came amid reports that Italy has officially pulled out of the initiative. Rome’s decision was reportedly conveyed to Beijing three days ago. There is yet to be any official statement on the matter.
Beijing also opposed “confrontation and division among camps that causes separation,” stated Wang. Over 150 countries were participating in BRI, which is a testimony to it being the “most popular international public product and the largest international cooperation platform in the world today,” the spokesperson added.
“This embodies the huge appeal and global influence of jointly constructing the Belt and Road,” he said.
When the agreement was signed, then-Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte underscored the need for "a more effective relationship between Italy and China." Italy's agreement was set to be automatically renewed in March 2024. China's Foreign Ministry insisted that "China and Italy should further explore their cooperation potential" under BRI and "strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation to seek more fruitful cooperation results." Wang Wenbin previously said that both nations had witnessed "fruitful results" as a result of the project.
However, since May, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, eager to position herself as a committed pro-NATO leader, has been indicating that she wants talks with China about possibly exiting BRI. According to media-cited Italian government sources, Meloni conferred with US President Joe Biden on the matter. The US has long argued that BRI was an example of "debt-trap diplomacy."
Commenting on the move by Italy, which will assume G7 presidency in 2024, a government source was cited as saying:
“We have every intention of maintaining excellent relations with China even if we are no longer part of the belt and road initiative... Other G7 nations have closer relations with China than we do, despite the fact they were never in [the BRI].”
Inspired by the Silk Road ancient network of trade routes that spanned the Asian and European continents for about 1,400 years until the mid-15th century, the Belt and Road project was launched in 2013. By June 2023, over 150 nations had signed the BRI cooperation pacts with China.
The success of the BRI in the last 10 years is further proof of the emerging multipolar world, as it challenges the conventional Western hegemonic structures, pundits earlier told Sputnik. Countries of the Global South participating in the BRI were getting an opportunity "to have a greater say in how they shape their economies," while "forging strategic partnerships.”
Speaking at the Third Belt and Road Forum (BRF) in Beijing in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the strategy behind China’s Belt and Road Initiative is in line with Russia's ideas about the formation of a large Eurasian space, where various integration processes could be linked, including within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union.
The BRI is in line with “our well-known proposal to form a large Eurasian space, as a space of cooperation and interaction of like-minded people, where a variety of integration processes will be linked,” the Russian president said, referring to Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Eurasian Economic Union, which Putin said “Russia is successfully developing together with its partners in post-Soviet space.”