An international conference on “India, China and the New Silk Road Initiatives: Challenges and Opportunities” being hosted by Mahatma Gandhi University under the auspices of the Institute for Contemporary Chinese Studies and the School of International Relations and Politics (SIRP) will begin on Friday.
The two-day conference will bring together international scholars, academics, policy makers, analysts, diplomats, and experts from India and abroad to discuss the multi-dimensional aspects of the ‘one belt, one road policy’, said K.M. Seethi, professor and media coordinator at SIRP.
According to a release, the conference will focus on India-China relations. It will address the impact of the one road and one belt initiative on international relations and the power structure in the contemporary world.
It will also examine the economic and strategic imperatives of this new initiative and its impact on the economic and strategic interests of India.
The conference will be inaugurated by Vice Chancellor Babu Sebastian. Alka Acharya, Director, Institute of Chinese Studies, and Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University will deliver the keynote address.
Li Mingquan, Professor and vice president, Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences, China, will make a special address.
There will also be a special screening of Guli’s Childr en, a film on cultural-historical ties between Kerala and China. Calicut or Guli in Chinese was an important node in the overall links in the ancient silk route.
The film was produced by Joe Thomas Karackattu, faculty at the Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Madras. It will be screened at 6.00 p.m. on November 11. The film draws on physical artefacts and also traces of human genealogy that survive today. It successfully locates a Malayali family that moved to China over 700 years ago during the Yuan dynasty.
