China Unbound by Joanna Chiu

Author:Joanna Chiu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2021-09-08T16:05:13+00:00

The following morning, having misread my appointment schedule, I rushed out the door and sprinted to the nearest train station to hail a cab, which then had to navigate gridlock traffic. My first interview of the day was with Enrico Fardella, and as I would find out, he was not the kind of man to be kept waiting.

A Sicilian who has spent two decades working and teaching in Beijing and who was part of the welcoming party for Xi’s visit in Palermo, his indignation was clear at first, but soon he dissolved into apologies when he realized I’d made an honest mistake.

Well-built and exuding confidence, he was waiting at the atelier of Mauro and Carmelo Crimi, an expert father-son team of bespoke tailors. Fardella is a professor at the History Department of Peking University, where he is also the founder and director of the school’s Centre for Mediterranean Area Studies. In Beijing, he is part of the same influential Italian expatriate circle as Michele Geraci, a group of people the Italian government has relied on to help facilitate high-level dialogue between the two countries.

As a proud Sicilian, Fardella is passionate about helping talented countrymen like the Crimis make inroads in China. The year before, he had arranged for them to travel to Beijing to create bespoke suits for the affluent artists and businesspeople in his large Chinese network. The pair worked alongside local seamstresses and were impressed by the refined tastes of their new customers.

After a tour of the atelier, I hopped on the back of Fardella’s Vespa and we cruised toward the waterfront to tour a sprawling palace once owned by Bulgarian princes and now being converted into an art gallery and creative hub by millionaire art collector and philanthropist Massimo Valsecchi. Renovating such a beautiful building and filling it with priceless artifacts in the middle of the former base of the Sicilian Mafia was the most convincing sign of renewed optimism I had seen in Palermo so far.

At a café outside, after ordering a smorgasbord of Sicilian street food specialties, Fardella told me he wants to help however he can with cultural and trade ties. China is one of the great loves of his life, he said, and he thinks Italians have a lot to learn from the efficient and pragmatic way that many Chinese do business.

His country’s unbridled enthusiasm for bringing all kinds of Chinese investment and companies to Italy does worry him, however. It’s important to stay “sane,” think independently, and make decisions accordingly, he said. “We talk about whether or not to accept Huawei, but would the Chinese let a foreign company be in charge of developing its 5G networks? No! Because the Chinese aren’t stupid. So why should we?”

Fardella thinks people in the political class in Europe either exaggerate or underestimate the CCP’s ability to interfere in other countries. Such simplified debates only serve the people who benefit from the polarization and obfuscation, according to him. While he passionately believes that citizens and companies

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