How India is recalibrating its China policy |
For a decade, India’s foreign-policy discourse has hung on a paradox: the simultaneous insistence on strategic autonomy and an ever-deeper entanglement in global economic networks. That paradox is now being managed not through doctrinal rigidity but through calibrated pragmatism. New Delhi’s recent decision to streamline business visas for Chinese professionals is precisely that sort of pragmatic, low-flash policy: a narrowly targeted operational reform that signals a rebalancing of priorities without amounting to a grand strategic pivot. The move matters because it illuminates how a posture of multialignment can be instrumentally deployed to protect India’s economic and technological ambitions while hedging geopolitical risks.
New Delhi has now moved to remove an extra layer of administrative vetting and is processing Chinese business visas within a four-week window, effectively easing the stringent controls that had been in place since the 2020 border clashes. The decision, driven by a high-level committee and welcomed by industry groups, is intended to resolve chronic delays that have impeded the flow of Chinese technicians and specialist personnel crucial to manufacturing lines, particularly in electronics, causing production slowdowns and significant losses for Indian manufacturers. Viewed through the narrow lens of supply—chain management, the policy is self-evident: India’s ambitions to scale high-value manufacturing, from mobile phones to solar equipment, collide with an acute shortage of technicians who understand Chinese-supplied machinery and production processes. When the absence of a few dozen technicians can stall entire assembly lines or delay commissioning, the macroeconomic stakes become visceral on factory floors.
Accelerating visa approvals is, therefore, a pragmatic fix to an operational bottleneck; it is not the same as revoking the security........