Fabio Massimo Parenti, associate professor of international political economy and global studies at China Foreign Affairs University and the Italian International Institute Lorenzo de’Medici.
As the COVID-19 spreads rapidly throughout Europe, it has posed both a grave threat to the life and health of the people there and become a formidable challenge to global public health security. Fabio Massimo Parenti, associate professor of international political economy and global studies at China Foreign Affairs University and the Italian International Institute Lorenzo de’Medici, accepted China Today’s online interview and shared his own observations on the joint efforts that have been taken between China and Italy to fight against the epidemic.
A Brother is Born for a Time of Adversity
Parenti is now living in Rome, the capital city of Italy, where the situation is getting worse every day. The worst hit area in Italy is the Lombardy region with the number of COVID-19 cases already reaching nearly 30,000. “The entire country is on lockdown. All activities have been suspended, except those for essential services,” said Parenti. He further explained that people can only go out of their homes if they have obtained a written certification provided by the local authorities, explaining the reason why they are going out. People are starting to use masks, despite the fact there is still a scarcity of them.
Every day, Parenti receives messages from his Chinese colleagues and friends. Originally he had returned to Italy at the end of last December to spend his winter holidays there, after finishing a semester of teaching at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing. Since the end of January, when the first drastic measures to contain the epidemic in China were taken, his university in Beijing kept in daily contact with him. Later, his colleagues advised him to stay in Italy until the epidemic was more under control. At that time, Italy was not an epidemic area. Even today, he is asked, like other foreign colleagues, to daily notify the university about his health condition.
“We do it all willingly, feeling that we are protected even though we are located some 10,000 kilometers far away. In Italy, we have reached a very delicate crisis point and we are a little late, although the government has taken courageous measures recently. Technology would help, but apparently, we are far behind,” Parenti told China Today.
“As the flights loaded with Chinese doctors and medical supplies landed in Italy, many of us were grateful for these good deeds. Others, not always with a friendly approach to China, recognized that China is acting, whilst the rest of Europe at this moment is not helping at all,” Parenti shared his observations and then pointed out, “This mutual support confirms that Italy-China exchanges have always existed and the two countries are always ready to help each other. We gave our support to China, for example, during the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008. I hope that more and more people could understand about China’s sincerity and the prosperous future. We can strengthen our relations, within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and beyond.”
As an old Italian saying goes, “A friend loves at all times and was born to be a brother in misfortune.” Parenti said that the Chinese communities in Italy, including Milan, Naples, and Prato for example, have all organized donation campaigns to support Italy. “Chinese-Italian associations here in Italy are joining hands to work together in many sectors too,” Parenti noted.
Lessons We Should Learn from China
The Chinese response to the epidemic was a lesson for the world in terms of its quick speed and effectiveness. When the novel coronavirus first showed its strong contagion, China began to share information with the world in a timely and transparent manner. China has provided a valuable experience for the world and given it a period of around two months to learn from its experience and make preparations to respond to it. But unfortunately, instead of looking honestly at the contribution the Chinese people made, many in the West even exploited it to criticize China’s political system. “They underestimated it and finally underwent it, paying a very high price, a price that has a single origin: arrogance and an ill-concealed sense of superiority,” Parenti shrugged.
Another lesson, which Parenti learned from his numerous contacts in China, was the power of unity, collaboration, and cooperation between the ordinary people. “The Chinese people have joined together in the fight to defeat a common enemy. Even the experts from international organizations agreed,” said Parenti, and then quoted Bruce Aylward, senior adviser to the director-general of the WHO and head of the foreign expert panel, who said, "Ambitious, agile and aggressive control measures taken by China to control the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic, bolstered by nationwide solidarity and advanced scientific research, have altered the curve of the outbreak for the better, averted a large number of potential cases and offered experience in improving the global response to the disease."
Towards a Health Silk Road
China and Italy are two great civilizations each having a long history. And the two countries represent the oldest example of friendship between peoples and nations in the world. Italy has worked hard in supporting the international recognition of the People’s Republic of China at the U.N.
“This year 2020 also marks the 50th anniversary of China-Italy diplomatic relations,” said Parenti. Taking a look at history, we may discover that China and Italy were once the two countries located at either end of the ancient Silk Road. As a result, they have every reason to carry out cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative. Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte held talks in Rome on ways of jointly elevating the China-Italy relations into a new era and witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to advance the construction of the Belt and Road. “Thus, Italy has become the first G7 country who had signed the BRI MoU with China,” Parenti accentuated.
“It is now urgent to promote the health cooperation at a global level. A Silk Road of health cooperation aims to improve public health in countries along the Belt and Road,” said Parenti. The Health Silk Road, established in 2017, intends to further augment its health spending and strengthen health and research cooperation between countries along the Belt and Road. As the epidemic has spread throughout the world, we now have a latent opportunity for global cooperation on public health. Key measures should be taken that include increased consultation and exchanges on health policy issues, formulating international health standards and norms, enhancing cooperation in disease prevention and control, and training and capacity building. Efforts should also be stepped up to facilitate global access to high-quality and affordable Chinese pharmaceutical products to benifit people around the world.
“China and Italy have the same destiny. I hope that we can soon win the battle against the coronavirus. And I will come back to China to see my dearest Chinese friends!” Parenti concluded.
