Read The Diplomat, Know The Asia-Pacific
Clean technology has become embedded within a wider geopolitical contest over industrial leadership, technological sovereignty, and influence in the world, especially in the Global South.
The global energy transition is increasingly shaped not only by climate imperatives but also by competing individual industrial economies. Few rivalries illustrate this transformation more sharply than the growing clean-tech contest between China and India. For some observers, this competition is accelerating the green transition by expanding manufacturing capacity, reducing technology costs, and creating new markets across the Global South. Others argue that the same rivalry is simultaneously fragmenting supply chains, deepening geopolitical dependencies, and weakening the efficiency of global decarbonization. Both arguments are increasingly valid.
The debate is therefore no longer simply about who will dominate solar panels, batteries, or electric vehicles. Rather, it concerns how clean technology itself has become embedded within a wider geopolitical contest over industrial leadership, technological sovereignty, and influence in the world, especially in the Global South.
