Giorgia Meloni and Europe’s incoherence over China

Chinese leaders must be either confused or delighted by the stream of visits they have been receiving from European heads of state and government. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni may think that her five-day visit to China was something special. To the Chinese, however, it will have felt quite routine.

China does, after all, describe itself as “the Middle Kingdom,” the place around which the world revolves, just as in ancient Roman times the Mediterranean was named as the sea in the center of the Earth. So Chinese governments have always expected visitors to come and, to use their own old word, “kowtow” to them or bow at their feet. To them, a flow of Europeans kowtowing perhaps seems natural.

And it has been quite a flow. Just counting from the beginning of April, President Xi Jinping and his colleagues have received visits from Olaf Scholz, chancellor of Germany; from Andrzej Duda, president of Poland; from Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary; and now from the prime minister of Italy.

The peculiar additional fact is that on June 13-15, partway through this stream of European visits, Meloni hosted the annual summit of the Group of Seven, comprising Italy, Germany, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada, at the lavish Borgo Egnazia resort in Italy. At that summit in Puglia, the West’s leaders were nowhere near as friendly to China as this stream of European visitors to Beijing might imply.

In the summit communiqué, the G7 leaders declared their opposition to “actors in China” that “materially support Russia’s war machine” in its war against Ukraine, and expressed their “concerns about China’s persistent industrial targeting and comprehensive non-market policies … undermining our workers, industries, and economic resilience and security.”

Did Meloni repeat and reinforce these declarations in her private talks with President Xi and in the public meetings between Italian and Chinese businesses that accompanied her visit? Supposedly she did repeat the point about Russia’s war machine, though we don’t know how seriously.

But we do know that the public meetings were dedicated to signing deals rather than expressing concerns. And we know that some of the deals, including on electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and shipbuilding, appear on the face of it to be at variance with EU policies and not likely to please the United States, either.

This is why delight is the likelier Chinese reaction to European leaders’ visits rather than confusion. These visits, crowned by Meloni’s, confirm the deeply held Chinese belief that European policy towards China is divided, incoherent and always dominated by a desire to make money.

Admittedly, Meloni’s visit exhibited less of that incoherence than had the one a few weeks earlier by Hungary’s Viktor Orban, current holder of the rotating presidency of the European Council, who took pleasure in contradicting the EU’s foreign and security policies toward both Russia and Russia’s “no-limits” strategic partner, China, at every opportunity. But everyone knows Orban is a rogue elephant.

During her nearly two years in office, Meloni has seemed to want to emphasize her close alignment with NATO, with the EU and with the US. This visit to China put some of that alignment into doubt.

All these dealmaking visits by European leaders add to skepticism in Washington about whether EU member states are serious about confronting the security and economic threats posed by China.

This is true both of Republicans and Democrats, so Meloni’s Beijing visit will have done her no favors with either Donald Trump or the candidate who should now probably be seen as the frontrunner for November’s election, Kamala Harris. 

This is especially so given how small a role Italy’s military forces play either in defending Europe or in contributing to the security of the Indo-Pacific, both of which will be key American concerns whoever becomes president in January 2025.

It is a pity, since with the joint project with Japan and the United Kingdom to develop and build a next-generation fighter jet, Italy has a chance to benefit greatly from efforts to improve the security of both regions.

But, assuming the Global Combat Air Program connecting together Leonardo, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and BAE Systems survives the vagaries of domestic and international politics, its contribution will anyway not come until the 2030s.

Having done her five days of kowtowing and dealmaking, Meloni now should think about how she can contribute more immediately and positively to Western, and specifically European, security policy with regard to both China and Russia. Since she seems to like political symbolism, one such piece of symbolism is close at hand.

The Cavour aircraft carrier and an associated strike group of Italian and other NATO vessels are currently on a tour of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, visiting key allies in Australia and Japan.

Later in the year, when it is due to sail from Japan to the Philippines, Meloni should order the Cavour to conduct a “freedom of navigation operation” by sailing through parts of the South China Sea that China is seeking to bully the Philippines into ceding control over.

If the Cavour associates itself with the Philippines’ plight, Xi will be annoyed – which would be the point of this symbolic act, and would do something to show that among these European visitors at least Meloni can stand up for some principles.

Beyond that, the big task is to build support within the EU for a huge increase in defense spending, which is needed both to secure the continent against Russian aggression and to help give America the room to focus on keeping the peace in Asia.

That American-led effort in Asia is arguably the most important peace-keeping effort of our era, for its aim must be to prevent the first war in history between two nuclear-armed superpowers – as I have just written in a new book for the London-based think-tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, called “Deterrence, Diplomacy and the Risk of Conflict over Taiwan.”

When European leaders visit Beijing and contradict or blur the EU’s own policies, as well as undermining joint efforts with the US, they make that task ever harder.

Formerly editor-in-chief of The Economist, Bill Emmott is currently chairman of the Japan Society of the UK, the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the International Trade Institute.

First published on the Substack Bill Emmott’s Global View, and republished with permission, this article is the English original of an article published Sunday morning in Italian by La Stampa.