Altri pellegrini politici : viaggiatori italiani a Taiwan negli anni della Guerra Fredda

In the period of the Cold War, Italy, although under the shield of NATO, hosted one of the largest Communist Parties in Western Europe. For some members of this party, disappointed by the course of the Soviet Union and Stalinism, the People’s Republic of China was hailed as a different and more humane model of Communism: those who visited the PRC in this phase were “political pilgrims”, according to the significant metaphor used by Paul Hollander in his homonymous book, published in 1981. Symmetrically, the conservative sectors of Italy focused on the Republic of China based in Taiwan, and their interest increased after Italy’s recognition of the PRC and the breaking of formal relations with the ROC (1970): Italian journalists, working for conservative newspapers (among them, Luigi Romersa, Corrado Pizzinelli and Gino Corigliano), toured the island as ‘opposed political pilgrims’, stressing in their travelogues, in contrast with the PRC, the lifestyle, alleged democratic system, economic welfare, and religious freedom. The travelogue by Pizzinelli Le due Cine (Two Chinas), published in 1976, is possibly the most significant of all. The journalist had been to the People’s Republic of China in 1955, in the wake of Mao Zedong’s new deal; 20 years later he took his second trip, both to the PRC and Taiwan: based on a comparative approach, he contrasted the little improvements made at that stage by the first state, caused, according to him, by excessive ideology and statalism, and the boom of the second, seen as a model of liberalism and free-trade.