India of course wants to compete against China’s electric car market. The west will likely not allow them to displace domestic manufacturers in the US but the US may coerce them into opening plants in the US using their lithium supply to allow their brands to penetrate, the US also I would guess promises them to help drive out Chinese brands from global markets and to give those markets to the Indian firms or at least that’s how the Indians will understand it and probably the desire of the US (with an intent to eventually take control of those companies or at least ensure western bourgeoisie own a huge chunk to earn most of the profits).

Regarding China’s rise and partnerships with African states. While there are clear-headed leaders who understand the history of colonialism and reach for China, there are just as many mercenary leaders and those of a comprador, western-boot-licking nature in Africa who will taken some token debt relief in exchange for selling out their people and resources to the west. So China’s ascendancy through win-win cooperation is by no means guaranteed. For that to work both sides must have long-term visions and understandings of history which is something liberals are terrible at in both directions (past/future).

Let us recall history and remember that the USSR was starting to make inroads with former colonies and victim nations of imperialism after the second world war and that the US used coups, installation of brutal dictators, ethnic conflicts they fanned the flames of, compradors, threats of economic sanction and later in the century terrorism and extremism to blunt this type of independent thinking that would have helped the USSR. That hope has been crushed before as detailed for example in William Blum’s excellent “Killing Hope” book and in fact was systemically killed in the 50s through 70s with a new wave with new tactics of broad regional destabilization based off for example the Grand Chessboard type of thinking really taking root from the 70s to 90s.

The road for China is not as smooth of sailing as many like to sell it here. The US still has a lot of potency and strength coming right off the back of its era as a unipolar hegemon. That strength exists economically for coercion and sanctions, in military terms including its NATO navy and air force which polices the world and can enforce sanctions (also including hundreds of bases across the globe in nations that submit themselves to the US boot from Jordan to those in Africa itself even with the loss of the AES/sahel states), as well as dollar hegemony, and the fact they are the gatekeepers with the final say for access to the advanced and wealthy markets of the US/Canada, EU, and their occupied Asian vassals of Korea and Japan, as well as their southern hemisphere long-time colonies Australia/New Zealand which is a part of the economic strength but one that bears underlining.

The population of China+Russia is 1.5 billion but both are experiencing demographic problems from lowered birth rates so that’s expected to fall (the west by contrast is all too happy to bolster its populations via immigration for purposes of exploitation and domestic labor discipline so isn’t as vulnerable to the kinds of sharp drops Russia/China may be) and we must remember though China has done a great deal in lifting hundreds of millions out of absolute poverty and creating a thriving middle class that several hundreds of millions of those people are not consumers for various goods due to still lacking economic mobility as well as being adapted to say village as opposed to city life. A young Chinese person in a city is going to buy all kinds of goods but a Chinese person who is in their 70s, who grew up in poverty, who lives a simpler life in a village and who isn’t terribly well off even if not in absolute poverty isn’t necessarily a customer for an electric car company or for many other types of consumer goods that China produces. The real amount of people that China would have in a decoupling and 2-camps situation between themselves, Russia, and a few friends like Vietnam as a market for its production of consumer goods is likely more in the 800 million to 1 billion range which puts it roughly on par with the combined west of USA, Canada, EU/NATO, Australia, NZ, Japan, occupied Korea.

So then you have a situation of two roughly matched populations with one having the benefits of pre-existing hegemony and power and concentrated wealth as well as access to India a population of 1 billion to exploit selling western brands and making cheap goods for export to the west. So the road for China and BRICS (well BR*CS+ because India is all too happy to sell out to the west while pretending to be shrewd and getting deals) is a potentially rough one. We are looking at the strong possibility of a second full cold war or echoes of one at least with strong economic and trade barriers put up by the west and effectively two blocs plus bystanders who lean one way or the other.

There are positive headwinds compared to last time around after WW2 of course. The US is no longer an empire in its ascendancy phase as it was, it has (hopefully) peaked (if it hasn’t it means the destruction and looting of China and barbarism reigning forever over humankind), there seem to be many in the global south who’ve learned the lessons of last century and want cooperation with China. China is exceptionally strong and well developed, the US is looking exceptionally winded in military technology for instance, the gap is widening somewhat in China’s favor.

But the US and co can and still are going to put up a tough fight and China is still left contending with the fact that many in the west would rather nuke the whole world than let it fall to communism, than give up white supremacy and their own primacy and rule and thus left placating them and trying to stall for time and put off the confrontation and avoid provoking them too much. From such a position China cannot exercise its full strength.