'Narasimha Rao asked me why China was doing so well in attracting foreign investments and I gave my frank opinion.' 'I told him that giving thrust to exports had to be a national effort.' 'But in India, the system was very centralised in the Government of India and the state governments had no role to play.'
When Jiang Zemin traveled, as you can see in the photographs here, a Kodak Moment was never far away.
Why omit the Tiananmen massacre from the history of China's Communist party, asks Claude Arpi.
Thirty years after the massacre at Tiananmen Square, coerced collective amnesia envelops the Chinese nation about that horrific event. Claude Arpi glances back at how the student uprising could have changed the Middle Kingdom forever had the Chinese Communist party not traveled on the route of martial law.
Two elderly Chinese aerospace experts are hospitalised after a violent attack by a 'Princeling', states Jayadeva Ranade, the distinguished China expert and retired RA&W officer, highlighting the power the 'Princelings' ironically hold in the Communist People's Republic.
When Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier shone a light on the Pandora's Box that became famous as the Panama Papers, even they didn't know how it would shake up the murky world of finance, indeed the world itself.
Manorama Kotnis, the 94-year-old sister of Dr Dwarkanath Kotnis who is considered the symbol of Indo-Chinese friendship, has passed away after a brief illness.
China on Wednesday sought a clarification from Spain over a ruling by a Spanish court issuing arrest warrants against former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and four others for alleged genocide against Tibet, warning that the move would harm bilateral ties.
The reasons for China's negative response are located in its territorial dispute with India but also to its grand designs of dominating the region from its previous position of being merely a "balancer" between India and Pakistan, points out Srikanth Kondapalli, Professor in Chinese Studies at JNU.
'The "Hollandisation" of British policy may not bring the expected gains as the future may show,' says Claude Arpi.
Did Xi deliver a message to Modi at Mamallapuram, which though couched in a velvet glove was time-bound? What was that message? It is clear Indian/Israeli/US spy satellites would not have missed detecting Chinese troop movements towards the Ladakh-Tibet frontier. Then why did some important functionaries in the Government of India choose to only ask the Russians about this in April 2020? Was Russian reassurance of Chinese troop movements being part of a routine exercise the reason that the Leh-based XIV Corps did not mobilise itself for its annual summer exercises near the LAC? A fascinating excerpt from Iqbal Chand Malhotra's new book Red Fear: The China Threat.
'Why has the peace been kept?' 'Basically because there is a balance.' 'Maybe they think that balance has changed.' 'People can make mistakes. People can miscalculate.' 'If that is the cause, then I think what we have done, matching their build-up, etc, it is giving a good account of ourselves in the face-offs.'
'The American fear of the Chinese military is overblown. The countries that should be concerned are China's neighbours,' Jeffrey Wasserstrom tells Rahul Jacob.
If the chemistry between Modi and Xi Jinping goes well, it will herald a new future not just for the region but for the world, says Tarun Vijay.