China’s civilisational relations and cultural contacts with India, extending over thousands of years, continue to be a critical factor in sustaining a friendly and positive image of India in the Chinese popular perceptions, senior diplomat R Venu has said.
He was delivering the keynote address at the two-day national conference on “Understanding China: Indian Perspectives” organised by the Nelson Mandela Chair for Afro-Asian Studies under the School of International Relations and Politics (SIRP) at the Mahatma Gandhi University on Friday. Mr. Venu, who served the Indian embassy in Beijing, said his experience with the common people in China showed that they had no trauma or ill will towards India despite the 1962 war between the two neighbours.
While Buddhism emerged as the prime mover of cultural diplomacy of India thousands of years ago, trade and commerce continue to be the driving forces of contemporary relations. “It is high time we learnt from China and took the best opportunities made available with the rapid transformation in the Chinese economy, rather than remaining paranoiac about China,” he said
Foreign language courses
Earlier, inaugurating the seminar, Babu Sebastian, Vice Chancellor, said the university would soon launch foreign language courses such as Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Italian. Students who wanted to pursue advanced courses in foreign countries would benefit from the new venture, he said.
On the strategic significance of China’s Silk Road initiative, Srikanth Kondapalli, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said China’s leaders had sought to revive the centuries-old Silk Road, both in the continental and maritime domains, to participate in the infrastructure connectivity programmes across Asia, Africa, and Europe. This included construction of highways, hi-speed railways, air fields, energy pipelines and fibre optic cables for furthering trade and market mechanisms. The idea was gathering momentum as was witnessed in the number of initiatives China had undertaken in the past year.
T.G. Suresh, Scholar of Political Studies, JNU, said the rise of Shanghai from an insulated socialist city in the 1980s to that of a great cosmopolitan metropolis in the first decade of the new century had been fascinating. In this metamorphosis, Shanghai symbolised China’s aspiration to become Asia’s leading centre of finance, trade, and arts and a global hub of banking, services, technology and exhibition, he said.
Eminent scholars and diplomats from India and abroad are participating in the seminar, which will continue on Saturday.