Lui Zhaohui, China’s ambassador to India, travelled to Ludhiana and Amritsar this week.
New Delhi: China’s ambassador to India Luo Zhaohui donned a turban during a visit to the Dr Kotnis acupuncture clinic in Ludhiana Friday, indicating renewed ‘Hindi-Chini bhai bhai’ feelings in the wake of the April Wuhan summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Unforgettable visit to Dr. Kotnis Acupuncture Hospital in Ludhiana. Appreciations to Dr. Inderjit Singh for his relentless efforts in promoting acupuncture, TCM and enhancing #China #India friendship. Our Tribute to Dr. Kotnis, Indian hero in China during World War II. pic.twitter.com/R6N5SYz768
— Sun Weidong (@China_Amb_India) August 10, 2018
Exactly a year ago, though, the Chinese media was making fun of India. Bang in the middle of the Doklam crisis, when Indian and Chinese troops were facing off on the disputed plateau in Bhutan for two months, the Chinese state agency Xinhua put out a mocking video of a Sikh man:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU3eDUNPfLQ&feature=youtu.be
The video was startling last year, not because it was so tacky and unsophisticated, but because a Chinese official media publication had adopted the same racist imagery that insensitive Western media had once been accused of by Third World African and Asian countries.
Also read: Report about China extending road in Doklam is ‘incorrect’, say Army & MEA
But China was not supposed to be like that. China was once a Third World nation too, even though it is now a rising power.
China and India had begun their independent journeys together, even if they are now antagonists. Old-timers remember Mao’s exhausted Red Army soldiers arriving in Beijing in 1949, less than two years after the Union Jack was brought down for the last time in India in 1947.
The bitter conflict in 1962 and the other antagonisms came later.
That is why the August 2017 Xinhua video is such compelling viewing. The parody of the Sikh man is not funny, it’s strange. He is trying to put on a faux Indian accent – like what Westerners try to do when they are imitating Indians speak – but since he’s Chinese-speaking, the result is a vulgar mish-mash, a Mandarin cacophony gone terribly wrong.
“Nobody is blaming me,” says the Sikh man in the video, an imitation of an Indian soldier, “because I’m asleep.”
Some would call this racism. Others would say that the Chinese, a rising power, are trying to tell the world – the video is in English, not Chinese – that India is the one violating international boundary lines, that it has no business to be in Doklam, Bhutan in the first place.
One year later, none other than China’s ambassador to India is donning the exact headgear his own Chinese media made such fun of.
Moral of the story? Swallowing your own insult (and hoping those you have insulted won’t remember) is the best antidote to the promotion of bilateral friendship.
Is Lui Zhaohui, the Chinese ambassador to India, saying sorry? We don’t know, of course. What we do know is that the Chinese envoy understands civilizational sensitivities like few others.
Which is why he capped a visit to the Dr Kotnis acupuncture clinic in Ludhiana – Dr Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis, also known by his Chinese name Ke Dihua, is widely remembered as one of five Indian physicians who tirelessly and selflessly worked in China during the second Sino-Japanese war in 1938 – with one to the Golden Temple in Amritsar Saturday morning.
Finally met Golden Temple. What a perfect combination of magnificent architecture and natural beauty! The aesthetic creation and religious faith echo each other. Wrote a book on Sikhism in my early days as a scholar. The dream has come true today. pic.twitter.com/0JetGuKh7p
— Sun Weidong (@China_Amb_India) August 11, 2018
Ignore the typo in the tweet. Ambassador Luo is an India hand. He and his wife have studied in Delhi University in the 1980s. His fondness for India is transparent.
Also read: China and SAARC will be the pivots of India’s rise as global superpower
It’s another matter that the India-China relationship is going through its own paces these days.
But as we say, watch this space for more. Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost.
To the limited extent an envoy can help shape – not simply implement – his country’s foreign policy, the Chinese Ambassador is doing his best to bring sunshine to an overcast sky. He had made a suggestion that the CPEC could be renamed, to address Indian sensitivities, offered that India and China sign a Treaty of Peace and Good Neighbourly Relations. He recently said that the three leaders could meet informally, which we felt went against our stated position that India and Pakistan would resolve their issues bilaterally but may have been a well intentioned stray thought to help break ice that seems impervious to an Arctic ship designed for that purpose. When he completes his tenure, may he leave the bilateral relationship in better shape than he inherited it.