Italy’s encounter with modern China: imperial dreams, strategic ambitions

The growing body of literature investigating EU-China relations has often tended to overlook the specific quality of Beijing’s ties with individual European countries, mostly focusing on the broader discourse of China’s decade-long strategic partnership with the European Union. This analytical approach is fast becoming incongruous today, as bilateral engagement with national capitals re-emerges as an increasingly salient feature in Beijing’s foreign policy calculus. In Italy’s Encounters with Modern China scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds offer the first systematic account in the English language of the evolving rationales and constraints characterizing relations between Italy and China, two ancient civilizational matrixes and now key players in a context of global, complex interdependence. While each chapter looks at the historical or contemporary relations between Italy and China from a specific perspective, they are assembled to offer a comprehensive diachronic account of the most salient historical, socio-political and economic junctures, with particular attention to the intellectual debates which have shaped this unique encounter.