"You thought MP3 was invented by an American or Chinese? No, it was an Italian during the 1990s," he says. Leonardo Chiariglione is an Italian engineer who pioneered the establishment of digital multimedia formats - the technology that revolutionized the music and television industry.

Iannucci first visited China in 1991, and he discovered that the famous Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radio, came to Shanghai to promote his invention at the city's iconic Peace Hotel about a century ago.

The man who invented radio waves over long distances helped to lay the foundation for radio communication in 1896. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for physics for wireless telegraphy.

Smart Italian inventors didn't stop there and put their intelligence and efforts into commercial usage, "which you can even find a trace in China", Ambassador Iannucci says.

He points to the chair he was sitting and says, "maybe this chair is made in Wenzhou or Ningbo, but it was probably made by an Italian machine - so you're surrounded by Italian technologies in China and you haven't noticed that".

In Italy, there are 4.5 million small and medium-sized enterprises, which means, almost one out of 11 Italian inhabitants are doing their own business, says Iannucci.

It is a pity to see the difficulties faced by these creative but tiny companies when they try to make contacts with Chinese enterprises, he says.

"They have no large presence (of them) in China because they're too small to risk their capital in China," he says. "Therefore, promoting partnership (between Italy and China) in the small and medium-sized enterprises sector would be at the top of my agenda."

Given Italy's geographical location in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, with easy links to North Africa and the Middle East as well as the rest of Europe, the ambassador is encouraging more Chinese tourists and businessmen to visit Italy.

Iannucci recently invited the mayor of Shanghai, Han Zheng, to visit Italy.

"The number of Chinese travelers to Italy jumped by 50 percent this January when compared with January last year," says the ambassador, who says the surge amounts to a "tourism tsunami" that his country welcomes. Multiple-entry visas are now available to Chinese businesspeople, he adds.

Italy and China share a passion for protecting the old while creating the new, he says. Chinese traditionally respect a slow-paced lifestyle, and the Italian-based Slow City Organization, Cittaslow, recently awarded Yaxi town of Gaochun county in Jiangsu province the title of "slow city".

Many teenagers of Yaxi may be impatient with the leisurely pace of hometown life - no nightlife to speak of, no bright lights, no excitement - and they cannot wait to grow up and leave for the urban attractions of the big cities. But it was this laid-back lifestyle that attracted Cittaslow's attention.

Cittaslow was founded in Tuscany, Italy, in 1999. It was a spin-off from the Slow Food movement that started, also in Italy, in 1986 as a protest against the opening of the first McDonald's restaurant near the Spanish Steps in Rome. The movement champions a return to healthy, nutritious, home-grown, home-cooked food.

In contrast to the pace of slow cities, Iannucci observes the opposite in China's big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. "You can see so many young people running and walking quickly on the streets - they're full of energy. Once you arrive at the airport, you immediately feel the sense of activity and energy."