Italian authorities, experts eye 'Belt and Road' harvest

VENICE - The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative has moved the first concrete steps in Italy, whose authorities and experts see a range of win-win opportunities for both countries.

"Today we are talking about concrete programs, we are here to create relations," Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro told Xinhua on the sidelines of the first Silk Road Cities Cooperation Forum, hosted in the water city of Venice earlier this week.

Several memorandums of understanding in different sectors, from culture and food to infrastructures, were signed during two forums on "cultural diplomacy" and the "Belt and Road" respectively held in Milan, which hosts the Italian world exposition, and Venice, the hometown of traveler Marco Polo.

The Silk Road has always been a symbol of longstanding friendship between China and Italy, the latter also being a gate to Europe for China, Brugnaro, former President of the Venice branch of Italy's largest industrial association Confindustria, went on saying.

"Mutual knowledge and respect is the basis of business, and dialoguing with Chinese people has always been the most natural thing for Italians," he said.

The Silk Road Cities Cooperation Forum is a project destined to "change the course of history and mark the future of the Eurasian continent," said Roberto Ciambetti, President of the Regional Council of Veneto region, of which Venice is the capital.

Ciambetti stressed the need of immediate action to implement the project of a "modern Silk Road."

He said his region is ready to become a "hub" at the center of a strategic geographic network which connects the most developed areas of Italy with the heart of central and eastern Europe.

The regional official stressed his commitment to help overcome the difficulties concerning ports and fluvial transport in Veneto and built new road infrastructures.

"We have to act local in order to think global," Ciambetti highlighted.

Among the memorandums of understanding signed at the Venice forum there was one between the port of Venice and the port of Ningbo that Italian authorities see as particularly important for implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative.

"The most direct route between the entrance to the Suez Canal and the heart of manufacturing Europe is the Adriatic Sea, and Venice is a strategic point of the Adriatic," Paolo Costa, Chairman of the Venice Port Authority, explained to Xinhua.

However, Costa went on saying, the Venice port is not equipped yet with the right infrastructures to serve the enormous movement of goods from China along the "Belt and Road" route.

"We have had the innovative idea of building an offshore port made of barges which would link the onshore port of Venice with other nearby Italian ports, thus significantly boost capacity," he said.

In order to carry out this challenging project, he told Xinhua, Venice aims at exchanging information and experience with Ningbo, which was the reason for the signing of the memorandum of understanding at the Silk Road Cities Cooperation Forum.

The needed infrastructures for the "Belt and Road" project, however, are not only material but also cultural, an Italian filmmaker, Alessandro Silvestri, highlighted.

Silvestri, who over the last five years has exported a comedy and a thriller to China's market, said he aims at establishing a network of "culture stations" along the new Silk Road.

"Different cities along the Road and Belt route could host events, exhibitions, meetings and conferences dedicated to culture but also able to attract business and trade opportunities at the same time," he explained to Xinhua.

"Culture also means investment. Actually we are also discussing the opportunity to organize a Film Festival which would be held every year in a different city along the route. It is a challenging but feasible project ... this is what we call cultural diplomacy," Silvestri concluded.