EVENTS

Abstract 

Post-Doklam, the Wuhan unofficial friendly Xi-Modi summit had been generally and widely interpreted in India as a much needed ‘thaw’ in India, China bilateral ties. The 14 February Pulwama terrorist attack, it may well be argued, not only tossed away the “brisk” political understanding arrived at and preserved by the two countries since the Wuhan summit. The subsequent (fourth) stalling of efforts to designate Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by Beijing may just have put a huge question mark to the prospects for a Wuhan-style summit meeting later this year in India. Perhaps not unexpectedly (even Beijing had foreseen this), both official and unofficial reactions in India against the Chinese ‘Great Walling’ of Azhar as well as Pakistan, were full of outrage and ‘disappointment’. Interestingly, as also expectedly, the media commentaries in China too displayed disappointment at and frustration with the angry Indian reactions directed at Beijing. While many in China have accused India of playing the ‘China card’ in the run up to the general elections 2019. Some others have gone as far as question the ‘inept’ and ‘inefficient’ style and substance in the Indian diplomatic approach toward China.

About the Speaker

Hemant Adlakha is Professor of Chinese, Centre for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies (CCSEAS), Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is also an Honorary Fellow, the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS) Delhi. His areas of research include foreign policy debates and discourse in the P R China, modern Chinese literature, culture and cinema. His PhD dissertation was on ‘Modernization and the State in Contemporary China: Search for a Distant Civil Society.’ He has published articles in Chinese and in English. He is a member of International Editorial Committee, International Society for Lu Xun Studies, Seoul (ROK). His most recent publications include, ‘Confucius’ in Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, 2nd Edition, Gale Cengage Learning, Macmillan Reference, USA; ‘Simla, McMahon Line and South Tibet: Emergent Chinese Discourse on Fears of Losing Territory to India’ in 100 Years after the Simla Conference, 2013-14, ICS, Delhi (Forthcoming 2018); ‘BRICS: A Key Mechanism in Beijing's Global Governance Strategy’ in BRICS and the Multipolar World, to be published in 2018 from the Academy of International Studies, the Jamia Milia Islamia University, New Delhi.