Modi’s diplomacy in China to get a soft-power thrust
BEIJING: Opening a Chinese twitter account, inaugurating the first Gandhian studies centre in Shanghai, presiding over a Yoga performance in Beijing and announcing a movie on a Chinese monk who went to India — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s softpower diplomacy is likely to go hand-in-hand with hard boiled talks on the border issues, trade imbalance and the general lack of trust between the two countries during his China visit next week.
Modi’s arrival in Xian instead of Beijing, the Chinese government’s power centre, is an indication that both countries want to wrap the visit in a more supple diplomatic tone.
Modi’s experiment with Weibo, a cross between Twitter and Facebook, is already showing results — notwithstanding the comments about Arunachal Pradesh ( or South Tibet in China) belonging to China.
For example, around Friday midnight a certain person by the name of Lu Ke Wen left a message on Modi’s Weibo page, saying he was very impressed meeting the PM recently. As it turned out, Lu Ke Wen is the Chinese name of former Australian PM Kevin Rudd, a China scholar and a fine Mandarin speaker.
Besides cleverly avoiding the Twitter ban here, Modi’s Weibo account –—the first for an Indian leader — has sent the signal that he wanted to connect with the people of China. His first post attracted over 11.2 million hits, the second more than 3 million.
During his May 14-16 China trip, Modi will also exercise Yoga — one of India’s most popular softpower exports and widely practised here — to strengthen links.
On May 15, he will sit through a joint performance of Yoga and Taichi — a Chinese martial art — at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.
In Shanghai, Modi will inaugurate the Centre for Gandhian and Indian Studies at the prestigious Fudan University — again a first. It will be the first centre in China named after Mahatma Gandhi whose vastly different ideology from China’s leader Mao Zedong kept him away from the mainstream narrative in China.
A film on the famous Chinese monk Xuan Zang (known in India as Hiuen Tsang) who traveled to India during the 7th century is also likely to be announced.