India China Encounters-Allies and Competitors. A global perspective

The aim of this contribution is to explore the comparative political economic relations between India and China in a critical framework focusing on the bilateral and strategic foreign policy ties. The intention is then to discuss the intertwined geo-political and geoeconomic foreign policy alignments in the global context where both countries share similar interests when it comes to op-posing the US and European Union (EU) in climate change policy, world trade and to a certain ex-tent in security and energy matters. However disagreement persists on unresolved problems in terms of attracting FDI and other economic issues such as access to energy. When it comes to the regional Asian setting, the global alignment and foreign policy convergence appears to be replaced by a much more competitive relation in strategic terms and the two entities act more as rivals for regional hegemony than as potential allies especially when it comes to getting energy resources. As a con-clusion to the paper, a discussion of possible perspectives is provided by pointing to the soft versus hard power diplomatic relationship between the two countries.