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Abstract

The US-China power rivalry has been an intensely debated topic. The elevation of Donald Trump as the US president in 2016, followed by the breakout of the Covid pandemic, has instigated fresh debates on the various dimensions of power rivalries between them. Two issue areas have increasingly become contentious, tech rivalries and climate change negotiations. These two areas pose a serious challenge to the US policymakers. Whereas the tech rivalries have led to a conflictual approach, the climate change negotiations have necessitated a more collaborative approach. These two contradictory approaches become more challenging given that the tech question is intimately related to environmental governance and climate change negotiations. These issues are bound to play a decisive role, not only in US-China relations but also in shaping global governance outcomes in the twenty-first century. This seminar will focus on following two research questions: (1) Given the divergent domestic interests and concerns within the Biden administration, how does the US intend to weaponise its tech dominance to checkmate China's aspirations to rival the US tech dominance?; (2) Given the bilateral tensions in trade and tech domains, how will the US convince the Chinese leadership to collaborate on the climate change question?

About the Speaker

G. Venkat Raman is a Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Indore. He is also an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi. He has recently completed his Fulbright Fellowship at the Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University (Virginia, USA). He obtained his doctoral degree from the School of Government, Peking University, Beijing. His research interests include current state of US-China power rivalries, with primary focus on the technology war and climate change; China's interface with global governance. His recent publication is a co-edited volume on BRICS titled, Locating BRICS in the Global Order: Perspectives from Global South. He has also co-authored case studies on Indian businesses in China.

About the Chair

Kishan S. Rana holds an MA in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. He is an Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, New Delhi; Professor Emeritus at Diplo Academy, Malta, and Geneva; Archives By-Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, United Kingdom; and Public Policy Scholar at Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington DC. After joining the Indian Foreign Service in 1960, he served at the Indian Embassy in China (1963-65, 1970-72) and learnt Chinese in Hong Kong. He also speaks French. From 1975-95, he served as an Ambassador/High Commissioner to Algeria, Czechoslovakia, Kenya, Mauritius, and Germany. He was on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s staff from 1981-82. Previously, he was the Commonwealth Adviser to Namibia’s Foreign Ministry (2000-01) and later Guest Faculty at the Diplomatic Academy, Vienna (2011-18). He has authored and edited 14 books (two translated into Chinese). His recent publications include Diplomacy at the Cutting Edge (2016) and Churchill and India: Manipulation or Betrayal? (2023).