India China Encroachment and Positioning in Southeast Asia

The aim of this paper is to entangle 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 opposing the United States and European Union (EU) in climate change policy, world trade and to a certain extent in security and energy matters. However disagreement persists on unresolved problems in terms of attracting Foreign Direct Investment and other economic issues such as access to resources and energy. When it comes to the regional Asia settings, 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 access of energy resources. As a conclusion to the paper, a discussion of possible perspectives is provided by pointing to the soft versus hard power diplomatic relationship between the two countries.