(Bloomberg) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping recruited Italy’s populist government into his global Belt and Road development project, with the signing of an accord that has sparked worries in the U.S. and European Union over the Asian power’s push for economic domination.
Italy is the first Group of Seven nation to volunteer for a role in the massive international program, with a memorandum of understanding that the two sides formally approved at the Renaissance-era Villa Madama in Rome on Saturday.
Chinese and Italian companies were scheduled to sign 10 accords potentially worth as much as 20 billion euros ($23 billion), including a leverage effect, at the ceremony, an Italian official said before the event while declining to be named.
To contact the reporters on this story: John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net;Sonia Sirletti in Milan at ssirletti@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Fergal O'Brien at fobrien@bloomberg.net, Kevin Costelloe, Steve Geimann
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Advertisement