BEIJING/ROME: France’s finance minister said cutting all economic ties with China was “an illusion”, while Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto criticised Italy’s decision to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) four years ago as “improvised and atrocious” due to its limited impact on boosting exports.

“We are totally opposed to the idea of decoupling. Decoupling is an illusion,” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters at the French embassy during a visit to Beijing on Sunday.

“There is no possibility of having any kind of decoupling between the American, European and Chinese economies.”

Le Maire nonetheless defended France’s ambition to become more economically independent in certain sectors. But, he added, the concept of de-risking, which has become a byword in the West in recent months, “does not mean that China is a risk”.

Italian minister terms BRI decision ‘atrocious’

“De-risking means that we want to be more independent... We don’t want to realise, as we realised during the Covid crisis, that we have too much dependence on some very specific components,” he added, citing microchips as one example.

Le Maire’s remarks come as some Western countries seek to reduce their economic dependence on China, particularly Germany, which counts the Asian country as its top trading partner and an important market for its automotive industry.

The US has also advocated de-risking from China, though US Treasury Secr­etary Janet Yellen said during a visit to Beijing earlier that decoupling of the US and Chinese economies wou­ld be “virtually impossible”.

China, meanwhile, has lashed out at Western efforts to de-risk, with Premier Li Qiang last month calling the concept a “false proposition”.

Le Maire is in China for high-level economic talks, and will travel on Monday to the southern tech hub of Shenzhen to meet with business leaders.

‘Atrocious’ move

Separately, Italian Def­ence Minister Guido Crosetto said that the decision to join the (new) Silk Road was an “improvised and atrocious act” that multiplied China’s exports to Italy but did not have the same effect on Italian exports to China.

Italy signed up to the BRI under a previous government, becoming the only major Western country to have taken such a step. Mr Crosetto is part of an administration that is considering how to break free of the agreement.

The BRI scheme envisions rebuilding the old Silk Road to connect China with Asia, Europe and beyond.

“The issue today is: how to walk back (from the BRI) without damaging relations (with Beijing). Because it is true that China is a competitor, but it is also a partner,” Mr Crosetto told the Corriere della Sera newspaper in an interview.

Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2023