China's Belligerence Is Spoiling Its Chance to Lead Asia
Instead of joining with India and others interested in a world order not dominated by the West, it’s driving them away with its uncompromising attitude.
Sending the wrong signals.
Photographer: Diptendu Datta/AFP/Getty Images
In India’s social media-obsessed polity, statements by ministers that do well online are closely watched — and their popularity can even push the government in new policy directions. Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar recently set Indian Twitter alight when he told off a mainly European audience quizzing him about India’s studied neutrality over the war in Ukraine. “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems,” said Jaishankar.
Video of India’s top diplomat telling the uppity Europeans to stop being Eurocentric promptly went viral. The only way the numbers might have been better, perhaps, is if he had been upbraiding the far more uppity Americans.