Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project

> I don’t see what the big deal is TBH

The main issue is that Italy is part of the EU, and also one of its major economies. The argument about unfairness is absolutely not a joke. In fact, it’s the main point. Doing business in China as a foreign-owned company in many sectors of the economy is, simply put, a huge challenge, when not outright impossible. This is mainly due to opaque or protectionist regulations. State-backed competitors also make the market harder to penetrate since they will always win price wars. Then add lack of concern for intellectual property.

Chinese companies don’t have these problems in Europe. Not even close. They enjoy all the advantages of a (basically) free market, whereas the opposite is not true. This is where the “unfairness” is.

The EU has been trying to find some leverage against China to balance the scale for some time now, albeit our efforts have been mild. That’s because the EU doesn’t have a common foreign affairs strategy and individual member states are always more concerned with their internal politics to actually go figure out one.

So China can just come here, pick a country that can be easily enticed by the promise of bilateral cooperation and handsome investments, and all of a sudden the EU now has a member who will start voting against anti-China policies.

Without a unified will, the EU member countries don’t have the contractual power to demand and obtain anything from China. We will be an easy game for them.

It's not that I understand the argument, my point was that many of the mechanisms that provided enormous advantages to Western nations is often rarely spoken about. For instance, US can often infuse large amounts of cash through the central bank because it's position as the global reserve renders it very unsusceptible to inflation. There is also the inexorable power of WTO/IMF and these "international" agencies that are often steered entirely for the benefit of the US and its allies.

I understand this may not apply to EU nations to the same extent, but then there are all sorts of historical inequities in their favor (esp. Britain) that one wonders if this new found "righteousness" is a bit ahistorical.

Consider India - it's basically run by erstwhile cronies of the British empire, who basically transferred all of its generational wealth to the city in little under 200 years. This while it was made into a cocaine tanker to destroy China. It was made to fight European wars, while being footed with the bill, and now the British groan about the pittance they pay India in foreign aid. Never mind that this aid, is mostly geared towards the Anglo-Saxon eugenics schemes of all sorts.

India currently owes about half a trillion to the IMF, after being run by a IMF crony, and his Italian mistress for 10 years. It's easy to guess what the IMF will ask for (far more loudly) when it inevitably goes belly up.