Italy and China together to build the future of furniture

The institutional meeting “Italy and China Together: Building the Future of Furniture,” promoted by the Esperienza Italia Association, chaired by Andrea Torracca, took place on Thursday in Rome at the Chamber of Deputies, in the Enrico Berlinguer Hall.

The initiative represented a moment of high-level dialogue between institutions and the business world, with the goal of strengthening dialogue between Italy and China and fostering new concrete growth opportunities for Italian businesses in international markets.

At the heart of the meeting was the strategic partnership between the Nankang furniture district in Ganzhou City (Jiangxi), one of the largest production hubs in the world with over 8,000 companies, and the Italian entrepreneurial system. An agreement born from a clear vision: to overcome past approaches and build a model of cooperation based on equity, shared development, and the valorization of skills.

During the event, the Honorable Chiara Gribaudo also spoke, emphasizing the innovative value of the project and highlighting how it represents a change in perspective for international economic relations. In particular, she reiterated the importance of an approach where Italian companies are not acquired, but rather are enabled to create new activities directly in local territories, opening up to the Chinese local market and, more generally, to the Asian market.

The project is part of a global context in which China represents a central player in industrial and technological processes today, with growing leadership in sectors such as automotive, robotics, and automation. In this scenario, collaboration between production systems becomes a strategic lever to address future challenges and seize new development opportunities.

Institutional representatives and key players in the country system participated in the meeting, including the Farnesina with Lara Lanzarini, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, SACE with Paola Valerio e SIMEST with Francesca Alicata, confirming the central role of public support in the internationalization processes of Italian companies.

The agreement promoted by Esperienza Italia stands out for its focus on protecting "Made in Italy" at a historical moment when more and more Italian entrepreneurial realities are being acquired by foreign capital. The objective is to reverse this trend by offering companies tools to grow abroad without losing their identity, know-how, and control, through models of industrial collaboration and joint ventures.

“In recent years, we've seen too many Italian companies being bought and stripped of their value. This agreement aims to reverse that logic: we don't sell "Made in Italy," we we bring to the world. We take our businesses to the largest markets, we put them in the conditions for growing, producing, and competing, while maintaining identity, quality, and control. It is a strategic choice, but also a choice of vision for the future of our industrial system”, he/she/it declared Andrea Torracca, President of Experience Italy