ROME -- China and Italy are in excellent relations, and inter-parliamentary dialogue can further enforce their longstanding friendship, Italian Senate President Pietro Grasso told Xinhua in a recent interview ahead of his official visit to China that kicked off on Monday and will run until Saturday.

"The friendship between Italy and China is profound as we have seen during the recent celebrations of 45 years of diplomatic ties," Grasso said. The two countries, he added, are heir to millenary political, cultural and trade traditions that ease bilateral relations and help win the complex challenges of modernity to seek mutual respect and benefit.

"We can dream to make a fresh start from our common roots to fully revive a continent, Eurasia, which is home of about 60 percent of the world's population and some 60 percent of global trade," Grasso highlighted, calling on China and Italy to work together to break down all economic, cultural and political barriers that can inhibit full cooperation.

Along this path, parliaments are central players, Grasso stressed. "Our representative assemblies over the years have contributed to enhance mutual understanding and cooperation and to strengthen bilateral relations through a number of meetings," he noted.

"I myself had the pleasure of receiving in the Senate Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC) Zhang Ping, and to recently meet Chairman of NPC Standing Committee Zhang Dejiang at the United Nations (UN)," he said.

Grasso also added he was honored to be invited by Zhang Dejiang to pay an official visit to Beijing and meet China's highest authorities. "It was an opportunity that I seized with enthusiasm, knowing that it will be a good occasion to develop relations between our institutions and peoples," he told Xinhua.

In his view, inter-parliamentary dialogue has become an "increasingly formidable instrument of political cooperation" between states. "In particular as regards Europe, but now also the whole world, parliamentary diplomacy concerns many areas of political dialogue, from economy, global financial governance, security, justice and defense to culture, health and food safety, and the fight against transnational crime," he said.

Grasso noted that since 2009 there has been an agreement between the Italian Senate and China's NPC for the strengthening of inter-parliamentary exchanges and cooperation, and wished that his visit will "give a further new boost."

In fact bilateral exchange is already and can be even more profitable for both countries, he pointed out. For example on the Italian side, he explained, " as the economic backbone, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has very interesting peculiarities especially on sustainable production models, not to mention the fields of fashion and design which boast widely renowned excellence."

The shared priority for China and Italy, Grasso insisted, is to build new bridges between them and between Europe and Asia. First of all, he went on saying, such bridges should be conceptional, that is to say "human, cultural, political, academic and scientific" bridges. And also they should be physical, meaning infrastructural, maritime, rail, air, communication and energy networks, as well as "planned and virtuous migration networks."

"Italy, which is physically, politically and culturally in the heart of Europe and the Mediterranean, is in the best position to provide Chinese friends with a geographical but also ideal pivotal access to Europe, the Mediterranean and the West," Grasso highlighted.

Grasso told Xinhua he believes that greater cultural exchanges, especially at the university level, can play a key role in spreading the knowledge of China and its ancient and deep-rooted culture, for which there is much interest in Italy. "A large number of Italian students would love to study in China, and we can do many things to help them at the institutional level," he said.

The "enormous success achieved by the China Pavilion" at the Italian world exposition that came to an end in Milan last October has further increased the desire of many Italians to visit China, Grasso underlined, thus wishing that there will be also an increase of flight routes between the two countries.