A lion dance is organized to welcome Chinese visitors to an airport in Milan. The number of Chinese visitors to Italy exceeded 500,000 in 2013, an increase of 35 percent from the figure in 2010. Most of the visitors planned to do luxury shopping there. Xu Nizhi / Xinhua

Nowadays, few Italian businessmen would deny that China is strategic for the growth of Italy, especially those who are doing business in China.

"China was our key to success," Massimo Roj, the head of an Italian company specializing in integrated design, said on Wednesday, more than 10 years after he first set foot in Beijing.

"In 2002, I was on a mission to China and found a world that I did not expect, one that was very different from the stereotypical country I had in my mind," Roj told an audience of entrepreneurs who met in Milan, the economic capital of Italy, to share their success stories in setting up businesses in China.

Roj's company, Progetto CMR, has three branches in China - in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin - as well as having several projects in China that have received international awards.

DB World Architecture 100 has put the company among the top architectural studios worldwide.

The Italian firm's objective of creating sustainable architecture makes China especially attractive for Italian businesses.

Design, fashion, environmental technology, IT and the pharmaceutical industry are among sectors allowing Italian companies to export to China the "intangible" quality of "Made in Italy," General Manager of Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Gaetano Micciche noted.

The research center of Intesa Sanpaolo Bank, which has been present in China for some 30 years, reported that China's demand is growing for sustainable development and high value-added products.

"That is why China is strategic for the growth of Italy," Micciche stressed.

"Growing domestic consumption and the middle class make the world's second-largest economy one with enormous potential," he said.