In a reaction to Beijing’s 80th anniversary parade marking the end of World War Two and China’s Sept 1 Shanghai Co-Operation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin where President Xi Jinping met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Kallas — a former Prime Minister of Estonia — warned of the “battle of narratives” between the global south and the rest of the world.
Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s former ambassador to the United Nations, is unafraid in his views, having written 12 books — with at least half focused on China or Asia’s rise over a declining West in the 21st century.
“I find that when I speak to Western audiences, they have been trapped in a narrative that believes that everything about the West is universal and applies to all human beings, whereas everything else about other civilisations is narrow and confined to one civilisation,” says Mahbubani, taking issue with the recent comments made on China and Russia by the European Union’s (EU) chief of foreign policy, Kaja Kallas.
