Chinese media adopts a positive tone for summit

BEIJING: Chinese official media, including a routinely strident tabloid, appeared to turn soft, mushy and hopeful on India-China ties as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping began the second edition of their “informal summit” in the southern Indian city of Mamallapuram on Friday.

Xi departed from Beijing for Chennai with 385 personnel on Friday, leaving a trail of mostly positive comment pieces and articles in state media outlets.

The “West” got some stick as collateral for apparently trying to drive a wedge between old, civilisational neighbours India and China. “The West tends to have the misinterpretation over the Asian century as it believes it would be a China-centred century. But late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping articulated long ago that no genuine Asian century would come without the development of China, India and other regional developing countries,” the tabloid Global Times said on Friday.

The Global Times routinely criticises India, and is known to mostly focus on India’s lack of infrastructure, poverty, and the divisions in its society.

An editorial in the China Daily, Beijing’s flagship English newspaper, was more circumspect but positive.

“The belated official announcement of Xi’s visits to the country’s two South Asian neighbours [India and Nepal] only 48 hours ahead of the informal meeting, was proof that Beijing and New Delhi cherish the opportunity to improve bilateral ties through the personal chemistry between their top leaders,” the editorial said.

“Film, yoga, smartphone industries enhance China-India links,” said a report in the official news agency, Xinhua.

A report by China’s only English news channel, CGTN, said Chinese and Indian companies signed over 120 MoUs ahead of the summit.

THE ‘WEST’ GOT SOME STICK IN CHINESE DAILIES FOR TRYING TO DRIVE A WEDGE BETWEEN NEIGHBOURS INDIA AND CHINA