To delve into a piece of Ryathal's great answer, the implications of a higher financial dependence of Italy on an outside benefactor can be seen in history, though not necessarily from the perspective of breaking up the EU.
China's Belt and Road Initiative has drawn a lot of ire from the international community in the sense that China is giving poorer countries huge loans to make huge infrastructure projects, often with the cost/benefit analysis of the cost of the loan to the benefit of the project being overly optimistic at best, and highly corrupt at worst. The fear is that these countries will be left with debt to China they cannot repay, and China can then name their terms for repayment of the debt, which could include anti-EU moves, which could be beneficial to China (not necessarily so in either case).
This has been seen before in history. The US engaged in this same sort of neocolonialism during the cold-war era, an excellent read on the topic is Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Though the legitimacy of some claims in the book are dubious, the principle is the same. Tell a country their GDP will increase by X% in Y years given [black box equation] if they let a US company (or in the current case, a Chinese state company) build a giant airport/power plant/highway - or just bribe the decision makers to let them do so. Then once the project goes overbudget and/or the return doesn't cover the investment, the crediting country says "give us better access to your X/buy more of our Y or we'll start calling your debts". It is easy to see how this could strain the EU if Italy was beholden to China in this way, should China decide that attempting to fracture the EU in this way was to its benefit.