India's China reset: the case for reopening a strategic economic dialogue
A veteran Indian policy hand argues that New Delhi and Beijing have let a critical economic channel lapse at exactly the wrong moment — and that resuming it is the lesser risk.
On 29 June 2026, the Indian Express carried an opinion column by Sanjaya Baru — former media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and a long-time observer of India's external economic statecraft — urging New Delhi to reopen the India-China strategic economic dialogue. The column is short, almost a memo, but it lands a heavier punch than its length suggests. The argument is that India has spent the best part of a decade treating its economic relationship with Beijing as a residue of politics rather than a driver of it, and that the cost of that stance is now visible in disrupted supply chains, lopsided trade, and an absence of crisis-management rails at the worst possible time.
The case Baru makes is the case most Indian strategists will not say out loud in English-language op-eds: that dialogue is not concession, and that closing channels does not amount to leverage. The subtext is that India's economic statecraft has, in this decade, drifted toward postures designed for domestic applause rather than outcomes in Beijing.
A dormant channel, by design
The India-China Strategic Economic Dialogue was institutionalised under the previous BJP-led government and has been suspended since the post-Galwan freeze in 2020. Indian policy has, since then, leaned heavily on tariffs, investment screening, and quiet restrictions on Chinese participation in digital and infrastructure tenders. None of that has produced a meaningful rebalancing of a bilateral trade gap that runs heavily in China's favour; most of it has produced friction with Indian industry that depends on Chinese intermediates.
Baru's argument is structural rather than sentimental. He does not ask India to trust Beijing. He asks India to talk to it, on a structured agenda, with verifiable deliverables.
Why now, and not three years ago
The timing matters. India's relationship with its northern neighbour is being reforged while the global order around it is being rewritten. A pause in dialogue that was defensible in 2020 looks increasingly costly in 2026, when supply-chain diversification is no longer a slogan but a procurement decision at the cabinet table.
The columnist does not name the Trump-administration tariff posture that has hardened through 2026, but the implication is plain: India's hand is being forced by third parties, and Delhi will negotiate from a weaker position the longer it waits.
What the counter-argument looks like
The dominant Indian framing — that any thaw rewards bad behaviour by Beijing — has real force. Galwan happened. The LAC standoff was not a press release. Surveillance tech, opaque PLAAF activity, and a quietly assertive Chinese posture in the Indian Ocean are not the products of a misreading.
But the harder question is whether estrangement reduces Chinese risk or merely denies India the institutional leverage to manage it. The dominant framing assumes the relationship is a single dial; in practice it is several. Security is one dial; trade is another; climate and rare-earth supply is a third. A posture that flattens all of them into a single sentiment has a way of punishing Indian farmers, Indian manufacturers, and Indian consumers without changing a single Chinese calculation.
Stakes, in concrete terms
If the dialogue resumes on the terms Baru sketches, India gets: an audit channel on critical-mineral supply; a forum for the rare-earths dossier that has lingered without resolution since 2023; and a back-channel for the kind of trade irritants that quietly compound until they become headlines. If it does not resume, India continues to manage a multi-hundred-billion-dollar trade relationship through press statements and bilateral summits that produce optics and little else.
The risk on either side is finite. The cost of remaining silent is not.
Desk note: Indian Express's framing of this column is editorial rather than wire — Baru writes as a former insider with a known point of view. We have treated the column as a primary opinion document and have not padded the source ledger with material the pipeline did not read.