Directions: In this section, you have a few short passages. After each passage, you will find some items based on the passage. First, read a passage and answer the items based on it. You are required to select your answers based on the contents of the passage and the opinion of the author only.

Given the global impact of US policies, everyone in the world has a preference in the American presidential race. With the nominating conventions of the two parties due in the next few days, picking the winner of the US elections is already a parlor game around the world. For India too the stakes in the US relationship have dramatically risen amidst the huge downturn in its ties with China. With the Ladakh crisis showing no signs of a quick resolution, what happens between the US and China is of great policy relevance. New strains In the US-Russia relations and a Sino-US rapprochement under Biden will certainly complicate India’s great power relations. For China and Russia, the preferred outcome is more than an academic exercise. Both their bilateral relations with the US are caught in American domestic political turbulence.

Unlike most countries that simply learn to live with the outcome, Beijing and Moscow are accused of trying to influence it. In a statement, late last week on foreign interference in the American presidential elections, the US counter-intelligence chief, William Evanina said that China was trying to undermine Donald Trump’s re-election campaign and Russia was targeting his Democratic rival and former Vice President, Joe Biden. It is no secret that Beijing is outraged by the Trump administration’s massive economic, political, and ideological offensive against China in recent months. And Moscow has struggled to overcome the deeply-held conviction among the Democrats that Russian interference was instrumental in Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016 elections.