China, India, and the Emerging Green Divide

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 decarbonisation. 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. India–China relations have long been interpreted through familiar geopolitical lenses: border disputes in the Himalayas, water flows from Tibet into South Asia, and broader competition for influence across Asia. Despite periodic crises, the relationship has remained largely stable, though persistently sensitive and prone to escalation. However, a new layer of rivalry is emerging that cannot be fully captured by traditional security frameworks.

China and India, as two of the world’s largest emerging economies and major carbon emitters, are positioning themselves as industrial and technological powers in this transition. China has established dominance across large parts of the clean-tech manufacturing ecosystem, while India is pursuing strategic autonomy through domestic industrial policy and climate diplomacy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visits to the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Italy, and the India–Nordic Summit following the conclusion of the India–EU Free Trade Agreement earlier this year reflected India’s growing effort to position itself not merely as a consumer market, but as an emerging technological and industrial power.

At the same time, China continues to consolidate its dominance across critical clean-tech supply chains while tightening its strategic control over sensitive technologies and manufacturing ecosystems. Yet the paradox remains striking: what is the status quo of China and India’s clean tech competition as both countries seek to scale industrial capacity and capture larger shares of the global energy transition market? How does this rivalry accelerate renewable deployment while simultaneously fragmenting trade, industrial policy, and supply-chain governance? For countries across the Global South facing rising energy demand and growing energy security challenges, can they truly benefit from this competition when the clean-tech order remains structurally asymmetric? And for the wider climate agenda, does the China–India clean-tech race advance global decarbonisation, or does it risk creating new geopolitical and economic barriers to a coordinated energy transition?