Despite the huge damage to global trade, COVID-19 could help bolster China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), according to Michele Geraci, the former Italian undersecretary of state at Italy's Ministry of Economic Development.

Speaking to CGTN Europe from Rome, Geraci, who is credited with spearheading Italy's cooperation with China on the BRI, said the novel coronavirus' effect on the infrastructure project "may even be positive."

"The type of industries that are involved in the Belt and Road, such as infrastructure, trains and roads, port development, are not things done indoors like small companies or service industries. So social distancing is easily achieved," he said.

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He added that Western concerns over the need to diversify the global supply chain, spurred by the pandemic, may cause European countries "to outsource more out of China and into other countries to diversify our suppliers and these other countries may be indeed those of Central Asia and maybe and hopefully even in Africa."

"That would be an additional boost to support the Belt and Road Initiative that of course builds infrastructure," he added. 

Asked whether Western leaders would reassess their relationship with China after the pandemic, Geraci said he didn't think it was "a very smart move to go head-to-head with China, which is the second biggest economy in the world." 

"China supplies a lot of goods for European and American companies. If there were to be a breakdown of the economic relationship between the US, for example, and China, it would be US companies that suffer most," he said.  

"China only exports 20 percent of its GDP. We think - maybe mistakenly - that China relies on exports. It does, but only 20 percent. Not as much as Germany, not as much as Italy, which has 30 percent of its economy relying on exports."

He said that some of his former colleagues in Italian politics who had suggested decoupling with China, "speak mostly to their own local domestic electoral basis to make them look like they're trying to protect them."

However, he said that companies would continue to do business with China "because they know that this is not the fault of one country. And they have their own personal interests in continuing to entertain a relationship."

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