My short essay focuses on the history of the Italian concession of Tianjin, China, granted to Italy in 1901 and ceded back to China in 1947, and how it contributed to the relationship between Italy and China in the following years.

The Italian concession in Tianjin is part of the Italian colonial past although, differently from the other colonies which were totally subjected to the Italian government, Tianjin was an example of “informal imperialism”, a sort of rented territory that the foreign powers had the right to treat as a national area and rule according to their own national laws. The foreign citizens living in the concessions were not supposed to respect the Chinese law, rather their own national legislation.

The concessions of the nine foreign powers in Tianjin, including the Italian one, had always represented a defeat for China that had to kneel to the military superiority of the West in the context of the Opium and Boxer Wars. This is why what was built by the foreigners was modified over the years, and many buildings and roads were given different names mirroring the various ideologies of the following historical times. Nevertheless, after China’s opening to the free market, in the late 1970s, the past foreign presence in China was reinterpreted and transformed into an opportunity to intensify the internationalization of the country, boosting exchanges with the West, economic activities and tourism.