Mario Draghi

Italy calls for review of China’s Belt & Road Initiative

Just before the pandemic began, China had found a very close friend in the form of then Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. China considered him as their entry gate into the European Union. The friendship became so close that Conte ditched the traditional pro-Western Italian foreign policy and joined China’s Belt & Road Initiative, which is infamous globally as the ‘Chinese debt trap’. Under Conte, the Chinese influence in Italy