Evaluate how trade and supply-chain dependence shapes India's strategic posture towards China, with reference to recent BRICS-level engagements.

India's trade with China touched record levels in 2025, with the deficit widening past $100 billion even as Atmanirbhar Bharat completed five years. Dependence has therefore become a strategic variable in itself — enabling engagement, but limiting how far India can press.

How dependence constrains India's posture

• Input lock-in: roughly seven-tenths of imports from China are intermediate goods and about a fifth capital goods — India's factories, not its consumers, drive the deficit. PLI-led assembly cut mobile phone imports by nearly 77% since FY 2020-21 [1], yet deepened component dependence — an "assembly trap".
• Coercive leverage: China's 2025 curbs on rare earth magnets disrupted Indian auto production within weeks [2], showing a sole-supplier input can be switched into a bargaining chip.
• Limited reversibility: post-Galwan curbs narrowed the deficit to $12.6 billion (Apr–Aug FY21) from $22.6 billion [3], but imports soon rebounded — restriction squeezed Indian producers more than Chinese exporters.

Where India retains strategic room

• Investment gate kept shut: restrictions on Chinese investment and apps remain a standing lever [3].
• Supply-side de-risking: the National Critical Mineral Mission (January 2025, ₹16,300 crore) [4] and the Cabinet-approved sintered rare earth permanent magnet scheme (₹7,280 crore, 6,000 MTPA) [5] attack dependence at source rather than at the border.
• Market-access diplomacy: protocols easing non-tariff barriers on Indian rice, tobacco, fishmeal and chilli meal exports [3].

The BRICS dimension At the Modi–Xi bilateral on the margins of the 18th BRICS Summit, New Delhi (September 2026), both sides underlined expanding trade and investment and reducing the trade deficit, while India reiterated that ties rest on strategic autonomy and must not be viewed through a third-country lens [6]. BRICS thus lets India table imbalance as a formal bilateral issue without escalation.

Dependence has produced a calibrated dual-track posture — firm on security and investment, pragmatic on trade. The realistic goal is not fewer Chinese imports, but fewer imports only China can supply; linking incentives to domestic value addition and scaling critical-mineral capacity can convert today's vulnerability into durable strategic autonomy.