Mattarella: "Global agreement to face humanity’s challenges"

It is important to “break down barriers” and have a freer market, because “open markets and commercial collaboration mean common interests that are cultivated. And this is the antidote to conflict and war”. It is crucial that China makes its voice heard in the Middle East and works to put an end to Russian aggression, and that the world recovers a spirit of “global harmony” to address the challenges facing humanity.

But we must always consider that there is an essential vehicle for spreading peace and stability: that of culture, recalls Sergio Mattarella. “It can give vision, it gives vision, and it is the strongest vehicle for peace, because it tries to make people understand what responsibilities and needs are”, says the Head of State, “what culture can do is important”.

For this reason, during his trip to China (three days in Beijing, today in Hangzhou and tomorrow in Canton) the President of the Republic remembered the figure of Marco Polo at every stage. He is a symbolic figure – the reasoning of the Head of State – of “what the relationship between Eastern and Western civilizations should be”, that is “mutual respect, the will to learn from each other, to pool knowledge for growth in common”.

The future – argues the President of the Republic – “requires many Marco Polos, as an alternative to those who instead preach opposition and practice war”. The President of the Republic exalts the style of the Italian traveller, “that of curiosity for worlds that are unknown to each other”, the meaning – he insists – “is mutual respect for a common cultural enrichment. This is what has made the world grow over the of millennia and centuries.”

“And this is what instead – the Head of State points out – is opposed by those who fuel conflict and cultivate incompatibility”. “There is a growing need in the world – and we see it in this international political season – to recover that spirit in which to meet, dialogue, learn from each other, which is the way for us all to grow together”, stated the President of the Republic in a interview granted to the Chinese TV CGTN in the ‘Leaders talk’ programme.

This morning Mattarella moved from Beijing to Hangzhou where he met a representative of the Italian community of the consular district of Shanghai and visited the Venice Biennale exhibition entitled “The Perfect Path – Marco Polo’s heaven city”, at the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts.

Subsequently, the President of the Republic went to the conservatory of the province of Zhejiang to attend the performance of the opera “Marco Polo”, performed by the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory of Venice. Tomorrow he will move to Canton where the program includes, among other things, a tribute to the tomb of the Jesuit Prospero Intorcetta and participation in the performance of Act II of the opera ‘Marco Polo’. The Head of State had words of praise for the exhibition on the Italian traveler organized in Beijing on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of his death. And for the museum where there is a large bas-relief that depicts the thousand-year history of China and where the images of two Italians stand out, Marco Polo and Matteo Ricci (“it is an element that underlines the friendship between China and Italy, for me it it was a source of pride to see it”). Italy and China have – Mattarella once again underlined – an extraordinary relationship of profound friendship, “they have made, in these 70-75 years, extraordinary progress in well-being and scientific, technological and social advancement, because they have operated counting on openness of markets, on the opening of international relations, not on protectionism, on closure, on opposition”. Every message “that leads to political collaboration – underlines the Head of State – in this economic and commercial perspective, is a way to strengthen peace”. Peace – underlines Mattarella again – is the necessary condition because the world is facing difficult challenges. Which concern “the climate that is changing”, global health in the world, the economy “in which often large economic entities, which act on a global level, are freed from the rule of any State and have no rules”. Hence the importance of always finding a convergence. And let’s recover the dialogue.