5G e Global Governance: Ricerca sul ruolo della cooperazione informatica tra l'Italia e la Cina nel contesto delle relazioni Unione Europea-Cina

This master thesis is going to focus on the importance of the new technological generation, 5G. In particular, doing a master thesis in international relations, the most important point will be the way of this new technology affect international relations. With the arrival of 5G networks, mobile communications will change in a radically different model centred on high density, large volume, extremely high speed, low latency or delay in data transfer and power efficiency. The communication from one device to another and among them to machines will be enabled by 5G. This will support not only voice and digital conversations but also the massive real-time sharing of data, which characterizes the Internet of Things, telemedicine, the running of smart cities, as well as the performance of autonomous cars. 5G will affect all of the aspects of human life and as it is growing the importance of cyberspace, at the same time it is necessary to rule more efficiently this space. In this way, international cooperation will be extremely necessary. China would invest in this technology even abroad but, as it happened in others fields like in the economic one, United States try to prevent this from happening. War trade is considered not enough for the Trump administration trying to decrease China’s high rate of economic growth. The United States has used in the last few years their power of foreign policy on their allies to prevent these countries from doing business with China. From this point of view, it is evident how the policy towards China is not changed even with the new administration of Joe Biden. The main goal of this thesis is to analyze the evolution of the China-Italy and China-European Union relations on the topic of 5G. In particular, in the Italian case, will discuss the different approaches to this question in the last two years. In the context of the talks between Prime Minister Conte and Chinese President Xi Jinping in April 2019 as part of the cooperation project of the Belt and Road Initiative, there were also talks between the Italian president and the CEO of Huawei Ren Zhengfei. On that occasion, mutual esteem was expressed and the foundations were laid for possible cooperation on 5G in Italy. From that moment the pressures of the United States on the historical ally were a lot until the American Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in person in Rome where he clarified to Italy that if accepted the proposed implementation of the technological infrastructure of China in Italy, the conditions for a continuation of cooperation and sharing of information at the intelligence level would have failed. After the experience of the Conte government in January 2021 and the beginning of the former president of the Bank of Italy and the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, and the new foreign policy of the American administration of Joe Biden, these two factors have strengthened relations between Italy and the United States. However, the awareness by Italy and other European countries of the importance of China at the international level creates important possibilities for greater cooperation in the future. International relations between China-Italy and China-European Union will be strengthened in the future in order to improve the global governance of cyberspace and guarantee greater peace and security for all citizens and companies in the world, also in order to benefit from the economic advantages for all of the actors involved.