Modi invites Xi for next round of informal talks
PM says Wuhan visit to open a new chapter in bilateral ties
WUHAN: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said cooperation between India and China is essential to maintain peace and stability around the world and offered to host the next informal summit between leaders of the two Asian giants.
Prime Minister Modi said he hoped his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the central Chinese city of Wuhan would open a new chapter in bilateral relations. The leaders are meeting for two days of candid talks, mostly without aides, in an effort to reset a relationship that was hit by the military standoff in Doklam, at the India China-Bhutan trijunction, nearly eight months ago.
Following a one-on-one meeting earlier in the day at Hubei provincial museum in Wuhan, Modi and Xi were joined by small delegations for further talks. The delegation-level talks were expected to last for 30 minutes. Instead, they went on for two hours, an indication that both sides were keen on detailed discussions before Modi and Xi engage in three one-on-one conversations on Saturday.
Delivering his opening remarks at the delegation-level talks, Modi invited Xi to another informal summit in India in 2019 and said they should continue to meet in the same format. “I hope such informal summits become a tradition between both the countries. I’ll be happy if, in 2019, we can have such [an] informal summit in India,” Modi said.
Xi too said he believed they can have more summits in the same format.
“We should look at the big picture of China-India relationship from the strategic angle and ensure our relationship continues forward in a positive direction. Friendship between the two countries should continue to grow like Yangtze and Ganges flowing forward forever,” Xi was quoted as saying by state-run CCTV.
“Looking ahead, we see a fast pace and bright future for China-India cooperation,” he added.
Modi, who reached Wuhan late on Thursday night, also coined a new acronym -“STRENGTH” -- to underscore the importance of people-to-people contacts. At the delegationlevel talks, he said such contacts could be taken forward through STRENGTH or “S-Spirituality, T-Tradition, Trade and Technology, R-Relationship, E-Entertainment (movies, art, dances), N-Nature conservation, G-Games, T-Tourism and H-Health and Healing”.
Modi also noted that it was possibly the first time that Xi had met another country’s leader twice outside the capital of Beijing. He was referring to his earlier meeting with Xi in Xian in May 2015.
Minister Narendra Modi on Friday presented specially made prints of paintings by legendary Chinese artist Xu Beihong, who spent time at Santiniketan, to President Xi Jinping during their informal summit.
Titled The Horse and Sparrows and Grass, Xu made the paintings during 1939-40, when he stayed at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan and worked under Rabindranath Tagore.
The reprints were specially ordered by the Indian Council for Cultural Research (ICCR) from Xu’s collection at Santiniketan. Xu (1895-1953) was the first visiting professor from China to stay and work at the town where the Nobel laureate penned many of his classic poems and novels.
Tagore liked Xu’s work and it was the Indian poet who inspired the artist to come to India. An exhibition of around 150 of his paintings was held in Santiniketan in 1939.
“Xu, as a representative of Chinese art, was personally cherished by Rabindranath Tagore. Motivated to rebuild a cultural relation with China, in 1939 Tagore invited Xu to spend a productive tenure at Kala Bhavan (Santiniketan),” Ritwij Bhowmik of the department of humanities and social sciences at IIT-Kanpur wrote in a research paper on Xu’s connection with India.
“Overwhelmed by this, Xu arrived in Santiniketan in 1939 and later formulated his first exhibition at Visva Bharati University in December,” he wrote.
“Xu, immensely praised by Tagore for his fluid style, painted 10 portraits of the poet, among them one in oil and the others ink sketches,” he added.
Bhowmik wrote that Xu also met Mahatma Gandhi, which left a “considerable influence” on his psyche.
“Later he wrote extensively about this meeting and also made a portrait of Gandhi,” he added. Xi is known to have read Tagore and has quoted him on occasion.
According to Bhowmik, Xu’s tenure in India ended in December 1940, when he returned to Singapore for the annual exhibition of the Society of Chinese Artists. Xu’s selected paintings, including portraits of Tagore and Yugong Removing the Mountain, were exhibited there.
Xu’s work is also said to have inspired renowned painter MF Husain, who met him in Beijing in 1951. They met during one of the earliest cultural exchanges between India and China.
Xu Beihong arrived in Santiniketan in 1939 and later formulated his first exhibition at Visva Bharati University in December. Xu, immensely praised by Tagore for his fluid style, painted 10 portraits of the poet. RITWIJ BHOWMIK, department of humanities and social sciences at IIT-Kanpur, in his research paper