EVENTS

Abstract           

Was the month of July unkind to the Chinese Dream? A series of setbacks, some sudden and some not so unexpected – ranging from foreign policy to economy and trade to politics – all seem to suggest so. To list just a few, in the chronological order if you may, are Seoul’s decision to deploy the US Army’s THAAD missile, The Hague ruling awarding a huge victory to the Philippines over China in the struggle over the SCS, the worrying half-yearly report that the private sector investment in 2016 stood at a dismal 2.8 percent and lastly, the prospect of a new “golden age” in UK-China relations coming to a crashing halt with London announcing suspension of the approval of the Henkley Project. None of this has been good news to the dreamer, Xi Jinping. But the 7/12 ruling’s rejection of the “nine-dash-line” policy has not only hugely damaged the image of “Papa Xi” as the party’s most powerful leader in decades, but has put a damper on the reported ambition of the party general secretary to extend his term beyond 2022. Interestingly, experts and analysts outside the Peoples’ Republic view the SCS verdict as having seriously questioned the party leadership’s ability to realize China’s “Great Power” status. In sharp contrast, or rather ironically, emerging domestic critical discourse perceives the survival of the communist party hinging upon how deftly the current leadership resolves the SCS dispute and without sacrificing the country’s core interest. Or else, one would not be hearing voices making noises like resolving the SCS dispute is only going to become “难上加难”.

About the Speaker

Hemant Adlakha is Associate Professor and Chairperson, Centre for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is also Honorary Fellow, the Institute for Chinese Studies, Delhi. His research on China includes domestic political discourse, foreign policy, language and literature, and cinema.

This presentation has been constructed out of a recent visit to Beijing days before The Hague ruling,  to participate in an international conference on ‘Security and Diplomacy: Territorial Dispute and Governance’. Over one hundred and fifty delegates – including twenty-five foreign scholars, deliberated over fifty papers at the conference for three days. All foreign scholars but one (from the National Defence University, Islamabad) engaged in fierce debate with the Chinese participants over the SCS issue.