In his WhatsApp profile picture Oliviero Diliberto looks affectionately at a black and white cat, a balanced synthesis of the motto ("It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, but that it catches mice") that Deng used to open China to private enterprise. It makes sense: with the discovery of the market, the Dragon took a path that would lead to its adoption of a civil code. And here Diliberto comes into play.

Born in Cagliari in 1956, secretary of the Pdci after the split from Rifondazione, Minister of Justice in the two D'Alema governments, today dean of law at Sapienza University in Rome and at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, where he teaches Roman law. His first time in China was in 1999, as a government official: «With my Chinese counterpart we laid the foundations for a legal collaboration. Among the options of the Chinese government was to base the code on Roman law: I was the minister who initiated this relationship, a communist and a teacher of Roman law. A very particular astral conjunction».

What language do you teach in?

«This is a small satisfaction: in Italian. English is used for all other disciplines but it is not the language of law. "Law" does not exist in English. There is no "Roman right" but "Roman law". However, law is not law, they are completely different things. Therefore, in the law faculty of Wuhan there is an Italian language course».

What is the difference between Chinese and Italian students?

"To get into university, the Chinese take a terrifying national test with just 10 percent of admissions. There is a limited number of places and the level of the university you are assigned to depends on your placement: it is clear that studying becomes an absolute commitment. In China the figure of the student worker is unthinkable, studying is already a full-time job. Not only that: you have the obligation to live on campus, as do the teachers, because the idea is that a community must be created. Of course, the campus is as big as Cagliari. And in Wuhan, out of twelve million inhabitants, one million are students."

What is the most difficult institution to make Chinese people understand?

«Succession. The Chinese say: "You've become a millionaire? Good, but what credit does your son have?" And so they got bogged down until they understood that if you don't guarantee him the succession, why shouldn't the millionaire squander everything in the end?».

How did it end?

«Children and relatives have the right to inheritance but pay a heavy tax».

What do we misunderstand most about China, apart from the spring roll?

"Which doesn't exist, by the way." Plot twist. "Or rather, it doesn't exist in Chinese cuisine: it's Cantonese. And Canton is big, but China is much bigger. But cooking aside, what we don't understand is that everyone, from the man in the street to the president, is convinced that they belong to a people, each with a role and a mission. And this is not communism: it's pure Confucianism. I'll give you another element. Chinese students do their homework. Here they would copy, but never there: it would be an admission of inadequacy."

Prodi, Tremonti, Rampini: When They Talk About China, Who Should Be Listened To?

"All three. I met Prodi several times in China and Rampini was a correspondent for a long time. Tremonti even gave lessons at the party school."

Oh yeah?

"The Chinese know how to appreciate merit and competence."

Prodi on Ukraine repeats that the Chinese are like the Sicilians: if they are silent they are in a bad mood. But the Beijing-Moscow axis is very solid.

"The Chinese have a very balanced position on the international scale, they know that war damages trade and therefore the economy. I cite two data: 90 percent of Iranian oil is purchased by China, but China's second largest trading partner is Israel. If you think about it, China has always been invaded but has never promoted wars: it is a people of traders. And intellectuals."

Do you remain faithful to the ideals of your youth in a Berlinguerian way?

«Absolutely yes».

But China is absent from Berlinguer's "democracy as a universal value".

«Berlinguer was openly polemical with the Soviet Union, and I would say with many foundations given that in the following ten years it dissolved. With China the problem is a bit different: we cannot apply categories that do not belong to its five thousand years of history. We arrived at democracy - representative, by the way - passing through the Athens of Pericles, the republic of ancient Rome, the Magna Carta, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the American Revolution and the twentieth-century constitutions. China is on a journey. In Italy no one talks about it but President Xi Jinping has introduced the element of China as a State of law for many years, and the Constitution has been modified in this sense. The very promulgation of the code aims to provide certainty of the law and avoid the arbitrary decisions of those in command. But the discussion was public and anything but painless: they were divided and argued, even in the newspapers, with much more freedom than a certain vulgate says. Therefore they will make a journey, but with their own categories. And if I may make a note on the export of democracy, when in Egypt they held free elections and the Muslim Brotherhood won, Al Sisi immediately staged a coup d'état."

Xi Jinping establishes the primacy of the law, then changes it to serve a third term.

"I would like to point out that Roosevelt was president of the United States for four terms, and if he had not died he would have served a fifth. And in Italy we are getting used to re-electing presidents of the Republic, something that was once unthinkable."

She, a pro-Palestinian, said no to the boycott of Israeli universities.

"Of course. If our government were to commit atrocities, what would Sapienza have to do with it? And then in the universities there are many of Netanyahu's intellectual opponents: why punish them? Of course, this has attracted harsh criticism "from the left" (I remember the quotation marks) but it doesn't touch me."

But even though he is a nonconformist, his most aggressive definition of Xi is "farsighted": doesn't someone who leads an illiberal superpower deserve a critical look?

"Any person of normal intelligence understands that governing a billion and a half people is a bit more complicated than we in the West might think. And political stability from this point of view is a guarantee. I also point out that each Chinese province, which is as large as Italy, has its own government, which answers to the central power but has very broad autonomy. It would be unthinkable for a single person to govern such a complex system. That said, the innovations introduced by Xi Jinping are truly far-sighted, and I say this because I experienced the introduction of the rule of law from the inside."

Is China a competitor, an adversary or an enemy?

"It is an extraordinary potential partner. I love Italy very much, I like to use the word patriot, and I think it would be good for Italy to continue to maintain excellent relations with China, precisely in the vision that the Chinese have of humanity as a community with a shared future. Because in a world like this, the pandemic itself should have taught us that viruses have no borders, the hole in the ozone layer has no borders, the melting of glaciers has no borders. And humanity should collaborate, not go to war."

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