The dragon’s cold breath

All efforts of the Ministry of External Affairs to get the Chinese to treat Pranab Mukherjee as the No 2 in the India Government were in vain. While his counterpart Yang Jiechi extended Mukherjee due courtesy during his recent visit to China, they kept Indians on the tenterhooks about his meeting with Vice-President Xi Jinping, widely considered the successor to President Hu Jintao. And then Premier Wen Jiabao cancelled his talks with the Indian minister in order to make an “urgent visit” to earthquake-affected areas. If this wasn’t annoying enough, plans of Mukherjee handing over a planeload of relief material at Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, almost ran aground after the governor of the province expressed his inability to be present at the airport for the brief ceremony. Realising that Mukherjee’s stopover at Chengdu might be cancelled due to “protocol deficit”, Chinese officials came up with the alternative of the city’s mayor dropping in at the airport. But this only infuriated India. As a compromise, India grudgingly agreed to the vice-governor accepting relief material. The one silver lining in a jinxed tour: Yang Jiechi had a Chinese artist draw a portrait of Mukherjee at a dinner in a special hall in the Forbidden City.