On October 18th, Hu Heping, Chinese minister of culture and tourism, had a video conversation with Dario Franceschini, Italian cultural minister, at an invitation. They exchanged ideas on improving cultural communication and cooperation, jointly holding the 2022 China-Italy cultural and tourism year and promoting G20 cultural minister conference.
Hu Heping said that China and Italy were outstanding representatives of eastern and western civilizations respectively as well as strategic partnership in all aspects. The bilateral relationship had been maintained and cultural relationship occupied a significant position. Holding cultural and tourism year was a vital decision made by Chinese president Xi Jinping and Italy president Sergio Mattarella for the development of China-Italy relationship and long-term development. Not long ago, Xi Jinping and Mario Draghi had a conversation on the phone and reached important consensus relating to China-Italy cultural and tourism year next year, bringing new opportunities for cultural cooperation between the two countries. In recent years, cultural authorities and industries on both sides had been spending concerted effort to promote the high-level development of the cultural cooperation and started international cultural communication in many aspects, becoming an example of the communication and mutual-learning between China and Europe, even the east and the west. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism would like to hold the 2022 China-Italy cultural and tourism year well by sticking to and promoting the friendly tradition of the two countries; overcoming the influence of the pandemic and making good use of China-Italy cultural cooperation mechanism, so as to push the cultural relationship between the two countries towards a higher level.
Dario Franceschini said that China and Italy had a long history of cultural communication, which was a good foundation of cultural cooperation. The 2020 China-Italy cultural and tourism year already started though halted due to the pandemic, but it still created opportunities for both sides to try new ideas, patterns and platforms. Italy would like to maintain close communication and design all kinds of events to hold China-Italy cultural and tourism year well by mainly relying cultural communication through the internet. He thanked China’s support for Italy to hold the G20 summit and expected the two nations to have more positive influence in multilateral fields as countries with strong cultural power as well as to reach the consensus that the international society needed to protect world cultural heritage.