US-China rivalry presages new world

Context: The situation between the US and China is not a new Cold War, which poses new challenges and opportunities for India.

Impact of US-China relations:

• Since 2018, the two sides began a tariff war and the US began to restrict the export of semiconductors to China. 

• As the situation in the US deteriorated due to pandemic, level of rhetoric against China began to rise. 

• Opportunity for India: Desire of the US to break some key technology links with China. Steps have been taken by India in this direction. 

• Corporations and businesses are looking for alternatives like India due to its size and political orientation along with their political proximity to the United States.

• Risks for India: China is a powerful neighbour with whom India shares a vast land border. China’s rise makes it a player in the South Asian and Indian Ocean region.

• The US is encouraging India to play a more active role in the South Africa-Indian Ocean Rim region, but it may not want to get involved in India’s Himalayan quarrels. 

• The US still views Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh as disputed areas.

• The new Cold War is not quite a repeat of that past.

• Not an ideological contest: Capitalist America taking on a form of state capitalism in China. There are no military alliances arrayed against each other on a global scale. 
• Military power: The US is way ahead of China which does not have the kind of alliance system the US has. 
• National interest: Communist or capitalist, China would behave in the same way. 

• The USA  is no longer interested in assuming the burden of hegemony.

Way Forward:

• Successor world order: There is a need to come up with a successor world order with new rules of game.
• Plurilateral alliances: There is room for plurilateral alliances aimed at providing both security and economic benefits. 
• Need to build in redundancy into the system, because one set of problems and solutions may require one kind of a coalition, another set an entirely different one.
• Manichaean struggle has no place in a world that needs more cooperation and collaboration.