Xi Jinping was on a four-day visit to Italy on the occasion of the country’s celebration of its 150th anniversary as a unified state, and during this visit both countries established the goal of reaching a bilateral trade volume of 80 billion Euros by 2015, almost double the 45.1 billion in 2010. Currently, more than 2,500 Italian companies have invested in the Asian country.
“China has shown the importance it attaches to ties with Italy, and Italy has also expressed its willingness for more practical cooperation with China,” said Zhao Junjie, a Beijing-based researcher of European studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, to China Daily. According to Zhao, high-tech cooperation will be a source of more economic benefits for both countries in the future.