EVENTS

How should the two days - or the 40-hours, as some Western media put it - that President Trump spent in the Chinese capital be assessed? The diverse interpretations and viewpoints regarding the outcome of Trump’s first state visit to the PRC in his second term, brings to mind the ancient parable of the ‘ten blind persons and the elephant.’ This was also the first formal visit by a US president after a gap of nine long years, and as expected, the official readouts issued in Washington and Beijing claimed that the summit meeting/talks were successful. The media in both countries spun the interpretations of the “success” to their respective advantages and in a manner best suited to their respective national interests and strategies. Critical analyses and conflicting viewpoints have been on display in both countries and in the international press. However, in the view of the speaker, this historic "Thucydides" summit meeting may be aptly summed up as a nothingburger.

Speaker

Hemant Adlakha is Vice-Chairperson and Honorary Fellow at the ICS, Delhi. He was professor of Chinese at the Centre for Chinese and South East Asian Studies, JNU, New Delhi. His areas of research include political discourse in the PRC and modern Chinese literature and culture. He is on the editorial board of China Report.

Chair

Manoranjan Mohanty is an Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, its founding member and former Chairperson. He is a social scientist, China scholar and a peace and human rights activist with research interests in the study of the political economy of China, India and global transformation. He was a Professor of Political Science and Director of Developing Countries Research Centre at the University of Delhi. He has authored, among others, The Political Philosophy of Mao Zedong (1978, 2009;Hindi edition 1979, 2010); Red and Green: Five Decades of the Maoist Movement in India (2014); Contemporary Indian Political Theory (2000); Ideology Matters: China from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping (2016; Hindi edition 2021), China’s Transformation: The Success Story and the Success Trap (Sage, 2018), Hindi edition Cheen ka Kayapalat (Sage Bhasha, 2020), Cheen ka Kayapalat: Safalta Ki Dastaan aur Safalta ka Fanda (Aakar Books, 2026).

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