Italy should learn how to manage migration and public security from China, says Italian politician who lived there for a decade

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The rise of populist politicians and movements has been the political story of the decade in Europe. "Populism" is a very broad label, sometimes used as a smear against anyone who pushes for genuine change. All the same, it has currently come to indicate a wave of movements that all share some broad features: they claim to be outside of the political mainstream, reject traditional politics as corrupt, are hostile to immigration, view the EU with suspicion, claim to speak for the people against the elites and hark back to the "good old days" when every country was supposedly in charge of its own affairs. 

Italy might well be the first Western European country to elect a government that belongs within this current. Although the prime minister Conte is an unassuming technocrat, the two major parties that make up the government, the Lega and the 5 Star Movement, embody two different brands of populism. The Lega's brand is more "right-wing", anti-immigrant, nationalistic and anti-EU. The 5 Star Movement is more anti-establishment and anti-traditional politics, and in some cases it promotes environmentalism, universal basic income and other progressive causes. On the other hand, it is strongly Eurosceptic and many of its leaders appear to feel an affinity with Putin.

Within this new government, the main link to China is the undersecretary for economic development, Michele Geraci. An ex-investment banker and economist, Geraci moved to China in 2008 and lived there for a decade, teaching finance in the University of Zhejiang and at the University of Nottingham's campus in Ningbo, until he was recently called back to Italy to take up his current post. He has long been close to the Lega, which proposed him for the government post, and he has also long been a strong admirer of the Chinese system. 

Geraci is fond of claiming that Italy should learn from the Chinese model and copy what it can, a point he has made in numerous talks and articles. His view of how China works would appear to be extremely one-sided, since he never makes any reference to China's huge debt problem, or the slowing down of its economic growth, or its worsening repression and pursuing of dubious territorial claims. At a conference organized by the Lega last summer, Geraci exhorted the audience (link in Italian) to "study China and copy the things we can learn from, adapting them to our needs", and he explained the sources of China's success, which lie in the fact that China "decides every year how much to build and how many people will have to move from the countryside to the city, programs immigration, and controls the tariffs on international trade and the interest rates".

This June Geraci authored an article published on Beppe Grillo's blog (Beppe Grillo is the founder of the 5 Star Movement, and his blog used to be the movement's quasi-official media outlet). Entitled "China and the Government of Change", the article lists a whole lot of ways in which Italy's new government should learn from China, a few of which really raised my eyebrows. One area in which China could show Italy the way is apparently the control of migration. China's management of the influx of migrants from rural areas to the cities over the last 40 years is presented as a model for Italy to manage its own problem with migration. "Who can we learn how to manage the migratory flows from? From China".

Geraci claims that the Chinese government only let people move to the cities after investing to give them "dignity and work", but it also limited "loitering and crime" by making sure that the new arrivals "knew the rules and respected the social pact of the place that hosted them". No mention is made of the inequality between rural migrants and urban residents that the hukou system creates, an inequality that extends to the migrants' children and is hardly very dignified. There also seems to be no understanding of how disruptive, chaotic and costly the whole process of urbanization has been. But most of all, there is no recognition of the fact that China's experience with urbanization has nothing to do with Italy's need to deal with a constant inflow of people arriving from Africa on rickety boats across the Mediterranean, given which Geraci's recommendations appear to be nothing more than some cheap rhetoric about how immigrants should be "kept in their place like they do in China". 

Even more strikingly, Geraci claims that Italy should learn from China in terms of public security. "Which is the country where public security works? Who can we learn something useful from? From China", claims the undersecretary. Mirroring the kind of discourse you find in the Chinese media, he says that "in China women can walk the streets happily at night without the terror that reigns over here". He then adds that "in the last few years, China has also improved a lot in terms of criminal and civil justice, overtaking Italy". He does add the caveat that cooperation would be good "within the limits that our culture and constitution impose", however we do not hear a single word about China's dire and worsening human rights record, in the face of which claiming that China's criminal and civil justice has overtaken Italy's can only make any sense if you think that the civil and human rights of criminal suspects are not worth respecting.

This pro-Chinese rhetoric is reflected in the new government's actions. Luigi Di Maio, leader of the Five Star Movement and minister of economic development, as well as unofficial head of the government alongside the Lega's leader Salvini, made an official visit to China last month, with Geraci going along as his sidekick. During the visit, Di Maio made it clear that Italy wishes to be the first G7 country to sign an MOU with China to become a partner in the Belt and Road project, something which the British and French prime ministers have already declined to do.

Geraci's uncritical expression of admiration for Chinese governance has elicited a reaction in the form of an open letter signed by a group of young Italian academics involved in the study of contemporary China. The letter calls Geraci's article part of a "very dangerous drift that is taking place today in many Western societies, including Italy", and takes him to task for his call to learn from China's handling of migration and public security, answering back with reasoned arguments. Strikingly, almost all of the letters' signatories work in universities outside of Italy. I recently met one of them in person when he visited Beijing. He told me that there is a very simple reason why most of the signatories are not based in Italy: the China Studies departments of Italian universities are linked to Confucius Institutes and receive funding from them. People are convinced that if they take this kind of stand, they put themselves at risk of being cut off from funding, cooperation, and visits to China. Now where have I heard all this before?

Geraci and Di Maio signing a cooperation agreement with Sichuan province during their recent visit to China

A vacation in Italy

I have just returned from a two week vacation in Italy to see my parents. While there I was struck by the decrepit state of some of the Italian infrastructure, particularly when compared to China.

After spending two weeks in the countryside near Rome, two things in particular really made an impression. First of all, mobile phone coverage in the Italian countryside is not terribly widespread. In the house where I stayed, which is located at the top of a little hill in an idyllic rural area, mobile phones simply don't pick up a signal. The same goes for many parts of the surrounding countryside and the nearby village. Driving around, I found that my mobile would only pick up a signal in certain spots. This held true for all Italian providers.

By contrast, in China mobile phone coverage seems to extend to every last hamlet. This may just be my experience, but I have traveled quite a lot in Chinese rural areas, including remote mountainous areas of a relatively poor province like Guizhou, and I have never found that my mobile phone lacked coverage (I use China Mobile). I don't know if this also holds true for the Tibetan plateau, but in most of China mobile phone coverage seems to be universal.

The second thing which struck me is the bad state of many Italian roads. In the area where I was staying, most of the roads seem to be full of bumps and small holes, making any car ride a real strain on the suspensions. Large potholes are unusual, but I did come across a couple of holes which would be big enough to puncture a tire if you drove over them fast. 

Of course in China there are areas where the roads are in an even worse state of disrepair. In fact, some villages still have no paved roads at all. Having said that, I have driven around a lot in Beijing and I can guarantee that the roads throughout Beijing municipality, including its large rural areas, are in quite an excellent state.

Another thing I noticed was how terribly difficult it is to find a parking spot in Rome, something which the locals are always complaining about. In Beijing, on the other hand, I have never had much trouble finding parking in spite of the city's dreadful congestion and traffic jams. I suppose part of the reason must be the underground parking lots which most shopping malls and apartment blocks are equipped with. To be fair, it is hard to build anything underground in Rome without bumping into some Roman remains.

All in all, I got the clear feeling that China's infrastructure has already overtaken Italy's in some respects, at least in the more developed parts of China. Of course Italy still has a much higher GDP per capita than China, and remains a pleasanter place to live for the ordinary citizen. In some ways however it is beginning to feel like more of a "developing country" than China.

Berlusconi's secret society

Berlusconi has resigned as Italy’s Prime Minister. It is too early to know whether we have finally seen the back of him in Italian politics, but given his age (75) it does seem likely that Italy will never be governed by him again.

The man has been the dominant figure in Italian politics for 17 years, from his sudden entry into politics in 1994 until today. He won the elections three times (in 1994, 2001 and 2008) and lost them twice (1996 and 2006), and the government he formed in 2001 was the only one in the history of the Italian Republic to survive until the end of its term.

I think it is hard for people who can’t speak Italian and aren't well acquainted with the country to understand just how corrupt and indecent the man and his cronies are. Any one of the scandals surrounding him, from his trials for corruption to his sex with underage girls, his relationship with convicted mafia bosses, his obscene and offensive puns and pranks, his blatant conflict of interests and his laws tailor-made to save him from prosecution, would have been enough on their own to cause his resignation in most western countries.

 His continuing hold on Italy has done great damage to the country’s international reputation, especially in these last few years. At the same time his ownership of Italy’s most popular private television channels, which hold a great influence over the less educated sectors of the population, helps to ensure that most of his voters aren't even aware what the world thinks of their prime minister. One scandal above all others seems to me to be worth mentioning, especially since it is virtually unknown outside of Italy, and even within Italy it has been all but forgotten by most people.

In the early eighties Berlusconi was a member of the infamous P2 Masonic lodge, alongside numerous other members of the Italian elite. This is not some conspiracy theory, but a fact which was certified by a police investigation at the time. The P2 lodge (the name stands for Propaganda 2) was a Freemason lodge headed by Licio Gelli, a shady Italian businessman who started off as a liaison officer between the Italian and German fascist regimes during the Second World War, and chose to participate in Mussolini’s puppet state, the “Republic of Salo’”, after the Nazis invaded Italy.

After the war he went on being a convinced fascist, joining a small party on the extreme right, and in 1966 he took on the leadership of the P2, a lodge which fell under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Italy, the official Italian Freemason organization. Slowly, Gelli set about using his powerful connections to bring as many politicians, industrialists, and military leaders as possible into the lodge, and turning it into a vehicle for his vehemently right wing ideas. The Freemasons either expelled or suspended the P2 lodge in 1974 (it has never been quite clear), after finding out what Gelli was up to, but the lodge went on existing illegally, violating Italian laws against the constitution of secret societies.

The existence of the lodge came to light in 1981, during a police investigation into the collapse of Michele Sindona’s financial empire. A list of members was found in Gelli’s home, and the names in the list included a host of important politicians and businessmen, the heads of all three of Italy’s secret services and the son of the last deposed king of Italy. Berlusconi was also include. Later on, a couple of documents were found hidden in the false bottom of a suitcase belonging to Gelli’s daughter in Rome's airport. One of the documents, ironically entitled “Plan for a democratic rebirth”, is generally seen as the P2’s political program.

The document clearly stated the aim of turning Italy into an authoritarian right-wing state so as to curtail the influence of the Communist Party and the trade unions. This was to be done by placing P2 members in key positions in the country's institutions and engaging in widespread political corruption. These were no empty threats. Gelli himself had taken part in the failed coup organized by the former fascist general Junio Valerio Borghese in 1970, whose aim was to set up an authoritarian right wing dictatorship. He was on excellent terms with the leaders of Argentina’s military regime. And Italy’s neighbor Greece had become a fascist dictatorship as a result of a right wing military coup a few years earlier.

Berlusconi has never denied being part of this shadowy secret organization dedicated to subverting democracy, but when asked about it he has simply given evasive answers, saying that he didn’t really know what he was getting into. Of course, you would never hear the issue mentioned at all on Berlusconi’s TV channels. As a matter of fact, you would hardly ever hear about it on the state channels or on independent newspapers either. Quite simply, it has become one of the outrageous facts about Berlusconi’s past which are well known and documented, but do not seem to have any impact on his popularity with the half of the Italian population which has supported him for years.

Article in the Chinese press praises the "relaxed" Italian lifestyle!

I was amused yesterday to read an article in the English language Chinese newspaper China Daily by someone called Lu Chang, called "Piano, Piano stressed Beijingers". Piano, Piano means "slowly, slowly" in Italian. The article encourages Beijingers to learn from the slow, relaxed Italian mindset.

The author apparently spent some time as an exchange student in Perugia a few years ago. She recounts an episode in which she wanted to buy a dress in a shop on the main street. She started to enter the shop, but the shop assistant stopped her and told her to come back the next day, because she was already off work and closing the store. The author insisted that she was a serious buyer, but the shop assistant was unmovable: it was closing time.

The Chinese woman, naturally for her, assumed that this shop assistant must have something urgent to attend to, but later on she saw her merrily drinking espresso and chatting with her friends in a bar. As the author says, at that point "I realized that for her money is far from everything. She would rather enjoy her coffee and leisure time than do business with me."

This is contrasted with Beijing, where a shop assistant would apparently never turn away a customer, whatever the time. She goes on praising the relaxed pace of life she found in Perugia, where businesses will close for two hours during the day for lunch, and comparing it with stressful, hurried Beijing.

Although comparing Beijing (at least 10 million inhabitants) with Perugia (166,000) seems a bit unfair, it is obviously true that to the Chinese, European life seems very relaxed and slow. Chinese people who come back from holidays in Europe, and not just Italy or Spain but even Germany or Britain, will often tell you how much free time everyone seems to have. I remember a Chinese man who had been to Germany and Italy on holiday, telling me how relaxed people are there, always drinking beer in bars. Another Chinese girl I know who spent a summer in Denmark, told me that she could never get used to such a lazy lifestyle! And it's not just holidaymakers. Chinese people who have lived in Europe also tend to have this impression. If even Germany or Denmark seem slow and relaxed to them, then Italy must really blow their minds.

I do wonder if it doesn't in part boil down to misunderstanding, due to the fact that the Chinese have different ways of spending their free time than Europeans. Perhaps in China it is simply less common to see people drinking coffee or beer in street caffes with their friends, because people tend to spend their leisure time in other, less public ways. In small cities, people certainly seem to find the time to play majiang a lot, and KTV (Karaoke) parlours never lack customers anywhere in China. However, it certainly is the case that Europeans do have more free time and work less hard than the Chinese on average.

Anyway, at least one Beijinger has decided to take life a bit more piano piano.