Meloni is looking for his very personal Silk Road

At the closing party of the celebrations for the lunar year, last Sunday in Piazza Vittorio in Rome, the new ambassador of the People’s Republic of China, Jia Guide, was seated next to a radiant Silvia Scozzese, deputy mayor in charge of the Budget, complete with a scarf traditional red Lunar New Year. And yet someone has noticed the absence of the mayor, Roberto Gualtieri. Because last year Gualtieri had sent a video message to the Roman Chinese community of the Esquiline – as the mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala, did at the party in via Paolo Sarpi at the end of January – and in the 2021 elections he had even stood as a candidate for the city council the businesswoman Lin Yifan, a Chinese naturalized Italian citizen, to try to involve the Roman Chinese community in the elections.