It is rare when hotels housing the visiting Prime Minister and the media are set opposite each other, with only a busy downtown road separating the two. But in Wuhan, the L-shaped Wanda Reign, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi stayed for the summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, was within the visual range of the Wanda Realm, where the media was put up. That made the 23rd floor of the hotel, where the official media centre was perched, a perfect spot for monitoring and filming the entry and exit of the prime ministerial motorcade.
After a late night arrival on April 26, marked by the customary sloganeering of ‘Modi-Modi’ from an assembled group of die-hard loyalists, the Prime Minister left the next afternoon for a much-awaited meeting with President Xi. A string of dense, but informal, exchanges followed, including frequent references to the far history of India and China. The growing Bollywood connect between the millennials of the two countries also did not escape the attention of the two leaders.
The venues of unbeatable elegance — ranging from a museum to the banks of the East lake — shifted constantly. They provided an ideal setting for at least five rounds of ‘heart-to-heart’ talks, within 24 hours.
In true Chinese tradition, symbolism loomed large over each encounter between the two leaders. The inaugural Xi-Modi meeting took place at the Hubei provincial museum, a storehouse of ancient relics. The message was clear: just like India, the DNA of Chinese culture was shaped over thousands of years. The common heritage of deep culture imparted exceptional resonance to ties that were rooted in far history. But there have been trust-sapping problems as well over the years. The two countries fought a bloody border war in 1962. They were close to another one last year on the windswept heights of the Doklam plateau.
Mr. Xi stressed that the revival of ties was not only beneficial for China and India; instead, in the age of globalisation, it was also key to the revival of the Eastern civilisation, which had lost its way in the dark era of colonialism.
The aspiration that Wuhan summit needed to be fused with the emergence of an “Asian century” nailed the subtext of the “new era” revivalism, which rang discernibly throughout the summit.
Harmonious coexistence
“China and India should carry out wider fields and exchanges at a deeper level, jointly commit themselves to the revival of Eastern civilisation, and jointly advocate respect for the diversity of civilisations and promote the harmonious coexistence of different civilisations,” said Mr. Xi when the two leaders visited the exhibition of relics. Mr. Modi, too, made several references to the layers of exchanges between India and China, which have imparted a unique identity to the trans-Himalayan relationship. On the sidelines of the summit, there were lighter mood-lifting moments too, including a soft power nudge to Bollywood. At the end of the banquet on April 27, Mr. Modi broke into instant applause after witnessing the instrumental rendition of the old-R.D. Burman song, tu, tu hai wahi dil ne jise apna kaha .
On a more formal note, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told reporters that President Xi “actually said that he has seen a number of Indian films, both Bollywood and regional, and that it would be a good idea to expand this and more Indian film should come to China and more Chinese film should go to India”.
