China

Africa occupies a strategically distinct and almost contradictory position in technology rivalry between the United States and China. The continent holds nearly 30 percent of the world’s critical mineral reserves and the world’s largest reserves of mined cobalt, making it a chokepoint of power over the hardware layer of the artificial intelligence (AI) economy. However, African states remain almost entirely dependent on foreign-owned computing infrastructure, designed chips and cloud platforms, leaving them as rule takers within export-control regimes managed extraterritorially by Washington and Beijing. This paper contests that African states are not pursuing “non-alignment” in its traditional sense but a combination of transactional hedging strategies like beneficiation mandates, supply management, contract-terms bargaining and continental rule-making, whose objective is ‘leverage’ rather than ‘autonomy’. By analysing the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) cobalt quota regime, and Zimbabwe’s lithium export ban, along with the contested build-out of African AI data centres, the paper assesses where this approach has been able to give favourable gains, and where it has produced new dependencies. It concludes that the binding constraint is not African bargaining skill but the absence of collective action: leverage exercised nationally is often priced by markets as risk, while leverage exercised continentally could be pitched as power.

The Xi–Trump summit is unlikely to reset US–China relations, but may produce limited transactional agreements on trade, rare earths, AI and chips.

International partnerships and increased technology transfers are vital to counter China’s dominance of critical minerals supply chains.

President Xi Jinping’s upcoming visit to the US is another high-level attempt to stabilise bilateral ties that remain highly volatile.

The GCI is one of the four global initiatives Xi Jinping put forward to pursue China’s core foreign policy concept, ‘Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind.’

China-led AI governance architecture allows Beijing to engage with non-Western countries without being dictated to by the US.

The 2026 China–Tajikistan Treaty transforms longstanding economic, political and security ties into legally codified strategic commitments

China’s expanding engagement has reconfigured established patterns of regional interaction that historically reflected India’s predominant influence, without necessarily constituting a formalised structure of hierarchical control. This research paper analyses China’s increasing influence in Nepal and Bhutan via economic engagement, infrastructural diplomacy, political alignment, and territorial assertiveness, evaluating its consequences for India’s national security and regional status. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), more cooperation on security issues, and more diplomatic activity in Nepal have made Kathmandu less dependent on New Delhi. This has made it easier for Beijing to strengthen its political and strategic ties. China’s claim to territory in Bhutan, especially over Doklam and Sakteng, as well as its 2021 three-step plan to resolve the border issue, show that China is trying to weaken India’s power and shift the balance of power in the Himalayas. Through qualitative analysis of policy documents and scholarly literature, the study illustrates how Nepal and Bhutan are utilising a hedging strategy to enhance their autonomy amid the intensifying Sino-Indian rivalry. Instead of implying a total erosion of India’s standing, the study contends that the expansion of Chinese engagement has diminished the exclusivity of India’s influence while simultaneously introducing heightened strategic complexity into the management of frontier regions. It ends by outlining policy options for India to rebuild confidence, boost connectivity, and engage in proactive diplomacy to keep its strategic power in the Himalayan area.

China’s rapid progress in nuclear fusion highlights its ambition to emerge as a dominant force in next-generation energy technologies.

The 2016 arbitral ruling on the South China Sea in favour of the Philippines continues to shape maritime governance and strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific.