Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi finally received the phone call from Xi Jinping he had been expecting for three weeks. Draghi, as rotating head of the G20, has been organizing an extraordinary G20 summit on Afghanistan, including non-G20, Afghan neighbor countries such as Pakistan.
However, Draghi’s pragmatism was inferior to typical Western arrogance as he tried to have Russia and China sign onto an agenda made only of “human rights” items. Visiting Rome on Aug. 26, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov complained that, for instance, that the issue of terrorism was not among the first five priorities.
Then, Chinese President Xi Jinping did not respond to Draghi’s request for a phone call for three weeks. Certainly annoyed by the anti-China posture of the Italian government, Xi let Draghi stew in his own juice unti, finally, he called him on Sept. 7. Most probably, a visit to the Chinese ambassador in Rome paid by Lega head Matteo Salvini on Sept. 3 helped clear the way for the conversation. Salvini’s Lega, a major government partner, has led the campaign against China on the Uighurs, Hong Kong, and you name it, over the last two years.
Whereas Xinhua published a 2,977-character account of the conversation, the Italian government statement is one-seventh of that. Reading and comparing both texts, it is clear that Draghi had done a little travel to Canossa. An Italian journalist with China connections said that the conversation was a sort of “coincidentia oppositorum.”
