Chinese expansionism: a new form of war and of "winning without fighting"?

While there are those who are indignant that, in times of pandemic, a government crisis may take place in Italy, the question that arises spontaneously is whether the aforementioned has not already existed for some time and is not due, rather, to an inability of executive action perceived by an ever increasing number of Italians.

That, on the other hand, the team led by Conte is "artificial", that is, it does not reflect the electoral will, is known. Just as his failures in both domestic and foreign policy are known: from the management of the pandemic plan to the negotiation to bring back the fishermen seized at the beginning of last September by Libyan militiamen loyal to General Haftar, who emerged reinvigorated by the sudden negotiation conducted by the duo Conte- Di Maio, complete with a handshake, to the Regeni affair.

But if the government narrative is punctual in insisting, even through various of its exponents, direct or indirect, guests in various television broadcasts, to talk about the war on the virus, to justify measures that, at best late, are often also ineffective due to their intrinsic nature and, in any case, more and more unpopular with the majority of the people (who was he?), at least than those related to the world of entrepreneurship and VAT numbers, however, it seems to ignore what could be defined as the cause of this "Conflict" (where the responsibility for spreading the virus can be attributed to it) or something else which, far from being symmetrical or asymmetrical, to use two categories in vogue in the war and international humanitarian law, has characteristics, instead , "Virtual" or, as some have argued, "hybrid"¹: the People's Republic of China.

It is well conceivable, in fact, that she, or, perhaps, better said, the Chinese Communist Party, has started a war for global influence and control, instrumental to its expansionist projects, and which changes shape according to the contexts, all, however, in synergy with each other: the military, the economic, the informative, the political, aiming at "winning without fighting"².

In this perspective, important corporate acquisitions by the Chinese side go unnoticed by most - perhaps even by our own government - despite the alarm raised in recent weeks by the Parliamentary Committee for the security of the Republic which, in a special addendum on the "penetration of Chinese capital into the Italian economic fabric" placed in the margin of the report on the protection of asset strategic nationals in the banking and insurance sectors, has denounced, with concern, an increase in flows of foreign direct investments from that country (China, precisely) but also the percentage of financial income, deriving from Italian companies under Chinese control that the main shareholder decides to reinvest in our country, instead of returning there (to China).

Which basically means that Chinese investors are taking root more and more in our national productive fabric, at various levels, deciding to reinvest the proceeds of their activities with us. Without considering the remittances sent from Italy to China, often the result - but the same applies to all those directed from our country to third countries - of the shadow economy (illegal work or income not declared to the tax authorities), or of activities criminals and subsequent cash laundering.

Among the aforementioned acquisitions, the one that the Faw group is attempting, in these days, against Cnh Industrial regarding the Iveco note stands out: beyond the employment data, which, in the immediate term, is certainly the one that could cause greater concern , what, too, should push the government to study an intervention aimed at averting everything, should be precisely the fear of yet another industrial piece that would end up in the hands of the Chinese, who would thus take a further and important step in their colonization work Italian and the world, since for the aforementioned (Faw) “It would be a matter of getting our hands on a significant market share in both Europe and South America entering two markets in which it is not substantially present"³.

Without considering that the sale of Iveco to Faw may not constitute “A problem only Italian or of the Italians, but of the whole European sector. Introducing a Chinese competitor to the mainland market means shifting the balance by threatening the position of the entire sector for anyone who is part of it "⁴.

Therefore, it is desirable that "no one sleeps" and that the government, so eager to order restrictions on the Italian people, with blows of DPCM, whose legitimacy, too, one could discuss, takes note of the Chinese danger (do not want the many citizens of that country who live with us, but here we are talking about national interests) and, in addition to stopping, or in any case better controlling or balancing, its advance, also through the powers deriving from Golden Power (aimed, as is known, at guaranteeing and protecting the ownership structures of strategic companies and of national interest, and which can be exercised in certain sectors of the economy, including, precisely, that of transport), supports, and indeed urges, an international commission of inquiry precisely on the origin of the pandemic, which, on the other hand, could, as mentioned, be another aspect of this hybrid war, which has also led to a revolution in the markets and of world economies. Also to symbolically guarantee a little search for truth and justice to all those people who, because of it, have lost their lives, their jobs, their serenity.

Because China, on the contrary, does not wait, and has no qualms, continuing, on the one hand, its expansion into the globe, on the other his disinformation campaign on the origins of the virus, trying to exploit the physiological scientific uncertainties to credit the hypothesis that the pathogen could have arrived in Wuhan from abroad, perhaps through imported frozen products. The various small outbreaks that are popping up in China are systematically traced by scientists and the regime press to this channel, while great emphasis is given to every study abroad that "moves back" the start date of the epidemic before the officially recognized one. from China, i.e. December 2019⁵, also by making our country pass as a greaser of the world.

The fact is that the images of the great celebrations that took place in Wuhan on New Year's Eve just passed, have gone around the world, arousing, on the one hand, sympathy for the population itself, which has probably vented in the most obvious way the anguish and the terror lived for months, on the other hand, but also a lot of anger, for what seemed, in other respects, a contempt, on the part of the government of that country, to the suffering that almost the whole world is experiencing, precisely because of the damn virus (and / or how it is dealt with).

The way to go is different, certainly not that of silk: at least, not under the conditions set up so far.