India Wants to Buy Fewer Chinese Imports, but Keeps Needing More

To understand India’s trade imbalance with China, look inside Indian factories.

Many of the big machines are Chinese, as are the electronic components and materials feeding them. An electric vehicle plant needs rare-earth magnets from China, while Indian drugmakers rely on Chinese pharmaceutical ingredients.

India has spent years trying to become less dependent on its giant neighbor. Instead, it has been buying more.

The total volume of goods exchanged between the two countries has nearly doubled over the past five years, to $151 billion a year. But the trade has become more unbalanced than ever. India now buys roughly seven times as much from China as it sells there.

That surge came even as relations between India and China went into a deep freeze. A bloody hand-to-hand skirmish at the Himalayan border in 2020 killed at least 24 soldiers and brought a run of high-level diplomacy to an abrupt halt. On Saturday, Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, will set foot in India for the first time in more than six years.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/business/india-china-trade.html