Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project

China is doing what is a great advancement for the world: integrating east and west, and in the process bringing the long forgotten areas in the middle east into the world trading order. The more investment in the Silk road, the more we will have a robust economic system integrating countries that until now were forgotten by the previous world order.

They weren't 'forgotten' they were made irrelevant through technology (airplanes, shipping containers, etc) and geo-political trends (the fall of the ottoman empire).

As great as it sounds on paper there are quite a few economists who are skeptical about the ROI from all of these investments.

But I do like how bold it is, which you rarely find in western countries (large scale infrastructure projects). They can barely build a stretch of road without it costing 10x the budget and getting caught up in years of political horse trading.