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Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project

(www.bbc.com)
132 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 23 Mar 19 13:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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pseudolus ◴[23 Mar 19 14:21 UTC] No.19470535[source]▶
Apparently the two parties signed 29 agreements covering a wide variety of areas - all of which are fairly standard and cover the standard touchstones of trade, science and culture [0]. That said, there is an undeniable symbolism in the appearance of renewing, at least nominally, a trade route which has occupied peoples' imaginations for centuries. In passing, one of the interviewees in the BBC story (Peter Frankopan) wrote a fantastic book ("The Silk Roads: A New History of the World") on the history of the Silk Road that is well worth a read. [1]

[0] https://www.corriere.it/economia/lavoro/19_marzo_23/tutti-ac... (Italian)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Silk-Roads-New-History-World/dp/11019...

replies(1): >>19470810 #
1. ideonode ◴[23 Mar 19 15:21 UTC] No.19470810[source]▶
Actually, Peter Frankopan has recently written an even more relevant (though confusingly named) book, The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World, which is precisely about China's Belt and Road initiative and the US (and EU's) lack of pace in keeping up with the scale of China's foreign infrastructure spend.