By Ramachandran Rajeev Kumar — 2026-06-23

China Wants Trust While India Builds Defenses

Asia needs India and China to cooperate, but trust cannot be demanded after decades of border pressure, dumping and the Pakistan axis.

By Ramachandran Rajeev Kumar

China keeps asking for trust. India keeps finding reasons to verify, defend and prepare.

On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's reported line that India and China must respect each other's core interests arrived alongside another kind of headline: India imposing anti-dumping duties on certain chemical imports from China, the European Union and the United States. One headline spoke the language of diplomacy. The other spoke the language of industrial defense.

Together they describe the actual India-China relationship better than any joint statement can. The two Asian giants need cooperation. But trust is scarce because China's conduct has made it scarce.

Trust is earned by conduct

Indian distrust of China is often described as suspicion, nationalism or strategic insecurity. That is too convenient. Trust deficits have histories.

For India, the modern trust deficit begins with the memory of 1962 and continues through repeated border pressures, the long militarisation of the Line of Actual Control, the Galwan clash, the difficulty of restoring status quo ante and a pattern in which dialogue often coexists with pressure on the ground. Add China's deepening relationship with Pakistan, including strategic, military and infrastructure links, and the room for easy confidence narrows further.

This is not ancient bitterness. It is a live policy condition. When Pakistan-related tensions brew, the China factor does not sit outside the frame. It stands behind it.

That does not mean India should refuse talks. It means India should understand talks as one instrument among many, not as evidence that the underlying problem has changed.

Anti-dumping is strategic language

The anti-dumping duties reported Tuesday may look like a technical trade story. They are more than that.

Dumping is not merely cheaper imports. It can become a method of weakening domestic capacity until a country loses the ability to make what it needs. For a developing industrial power, that matters. If Indian firms are undercut by artificially low prices, the cost is not only corporate profit. It is jobs, know-how, investment confidence and national bargaining power.

India should not become protectionist for the pleasure of protection. Consumers benefit from competition, and Indian industry should not be shielded from every difficult market. But there is a difference between competition and predation. Anti-dumping duties exist because that difference matters.

The message to China should be plain: cooperation is welcome, but industrial asymmetry is not a friendship model.

Asia needs both giants

A global future for Asia is hard to imagine without India and China finding a way to coexist, trade and cooperate on some questions. The continent is too large, too populous and too consequential for permanent hostility between its two civilisational states to be treated as normal.

Climate, debt, supply chains, regional stability, technology standards and global institutions all need Asian weight. If India and China work only as rivals, the Asian century becomes a slogan with a fracture running through it.

But cooperation cannot mean India keeps taking the wrong end of the stick.

For too long, China has benefited from asking others to respect its sensitivities while showing limited respect for theirs. It asks for core interests to be understood. India can reply that core interests include territorial stability, fair trade, industrial survival and freedom from coercive alignments.

Warm words are not enough

India's China policy therefore has to run on two tracks.

The first is dialogue. Keep the lines open. Reduce miscalculation. Talk trade where it helps. Seek border stability where possible. Do not allow domestic theatre to replace diplomatic work.

The second is defense. Build industrial capacity. Use trade remedies when justified. Harden critical supply chains. Watch the Pakistan axis without naivety. Keep military readiness high. Increase technology depth so that dependence does not become a pressure point.

These tracks are not contradictory. They are the only realistic way to deal with a power that speaks cooperation while preserving pressure.

The day China's conduct changes, India's posture can change. Trust can grow. Trade can deepen. The border can quiet. Asian cooperation can become more than a conference phrase.

Until then, India should not be embarrassed by caution. Trust is not a mood. It is the result of repeated conduct over time.

China has spent decades teaching India to be careful. India is learning.