Need to get over syndrome that 'West is the bad guy', says S. Jaishankar

He said the issue today was the building up of a strong sense over the inequities of globalisation where countries saw their products, manufacturing and employment come under stress due to their markets being flooded by cheap goods - an indirect reference to the Chinese trade and economic policies

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has said the West was not the "bad guy" as it was not flooding Asian and African markets with goods on a massive scale and that there was a need to get over the "syndrome" of seeing it in a negative way.

Mr. Jaishankar, in an interview to Malayalam news channel Asianet News, also made it clear that he was not batting for the West. He was in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday as part of the launch of the PM Vishwakarma scheme.

"It is not the West which is flooding Asia and Africa with goods on a massive scale. I think we need to get over the syndrome of the past that the West is the bad guy and on the other side are the developing countries. The world is more complicated, the problems are much more complicated than that," the minister said.

Former Indian diplomat T. P. Sreenivasan interviewed the minister for the channel.

On being asked whether Chinese President Xi Jinping did not attend the G-20 summit in New Delhi because it did not want India to be seen as leader of the Global South, Mr. Jaishankar said the reasons were up for speculation.

He said the issue today was the building up of a strong sense, over the last 15-20 years, over the inequities of globalisation where countries saw their products, manufacturing and employment come under stress due to their markets being flooded by cheap goods - an indirect reference to the Chinese trade and economic policies.

The minister said this underlying resentment and pain of those countries regarding the global economy was building up for the last 15-20 years and the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine conflict resulted in prices of energy and food items going up.