Ian Williams Ian Williams

Will Italy leave China’s ‘atrocious’ Belt and Road Initiative?

Xi Jinping (photo: Getty)

For some time now the world has being growing increasingly wary of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but rarely has any member of the scheme launched a broadside quite like that of Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, who described his country’s decision to join as ‘improvised and atrocious’. In an interview at the weekend, he said that the BRI had brought little benefit to Italy and one of the most pressing question his government now faced was how best to escape its clutches.

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Ian Williams
Written by
Ian Williams
Ian Williams is a former foreign correspondent for Channel 4 News and NBC, and author of The Fire of the Dragon: China’s New Cold War (Birlinn).

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