In tutte le cose l’uno si divide in due: Giuseppe Regis e Maria Arena

The article reconstructs the life stories of economist Giuseppe Regis and sinologist Maria Arena. Hailing from Turin and Palermo respectively, the couple met and married in Rome during the final years of the Fascist regime, after which they joined the Italian Communist Party. In 1957, the Party sent them to Beijing, where Regis worked in commercial intermediation and Arena taught Italian. Shortly after returning to Italy, the couple broke with the PCI in order to continue supporting Communist China by disseminating and translating political documents through the publishing house Edizioni Oriente and the journal Vento dell’Est. Following Arena’s death in 1986, Regis continued his scholarly work and maintained his support for Chinese economic policies, even after Mao Zedong’s death. Based on archival sources, memories and the qualitative insights offered by Regis’ Diario cinese, the article provides historical context for the trajectory of a militant couple who played a prominent role in global Maoism networks, in Italian political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and more broadly in the knowledge of China in Italy.