India Likely to Urge China to Loosen Tech Export Restrictions at Upcoming BRICS Summit

New Delhi – As the BRICS leaders’ summit draws near, Delhi’s trade ministry is quietly tapping domestic industry bodies for advice on how to broach a thorny issue with Beijing: a raft of curbs that China has slapped on a handful of high‑tech products.

According to a report in The Indian Express, Indian officials are preparing to raise the matter on the sidelines of the September 12‑13 gathering, where President Xi Jinping is expected to be in attendance. The goal? To press for reciprocity – essentially asking China to unwind procedural roadblocks that have been choking imports of rare‑earth magnets, battery‑cell technology, solar‑wafer equipment and specialised high‑voltage direct‑current (HVDC) transmission gear.

Why does this matter now? For India’s automakers, the lack of Chinese‑sourced rare‑earth magnets has already become a supply‑chain headache. Those tiny yet powerful magnets sit at the heart of electric‑vehicle drivetrains, and delays in their arrival have forced several manufacturers to hunt for alternate sources, often at higher cost.

“We’ve seen the ripple effects across the whole EV ecosystem,” said an unnamed executive from the renewable‑energy sector. “It’s not just magnets – China has also clamped down on ingot‑and‑wafer tech for solar panels, on battery‑cell production lines, and even on the specialised converters that keep HVDC lines humming.”

HVDC systems, the silent workhorses that shuttle electricity over thousands of kilometres with minimal loss, are critical for India’s ambitious plan to pull more renewable power into the national grid. Restrictions on the components that make those systems run smoothly expose a fragility that policymakers are eager to patch.

Pratik Agarwal, managing director of Sterlite Electric and chair of both Serentica Renewables and Resonia, told the newspaper that the curbs underline a broader vulnerability in global supply chains. “When a single market decides to tighten the tap, the impact reverberates far beyond its borders,” he said, adding that India’s own transmission‑infrastructure expansion could be hamstrung without a reliable flow of these high‑tech parts.

The push for dialogue comes against a backdrop of tentative economic thawing between New Delhi and Beijing. After the 2020 border clash, both sides imposed a series of trade restrictions that have only begun to loosen. Earlier this month, Chinese Ambassador Xu Feihong met Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal in New Delhi to discuss trade‑related grievances. In March, India’s commerce minister, Piyush Goyal, sat down with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Wentao, on the margins of the WTO ministerial in Cameroon – the first such high‑level exchange since India pulled out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership talks in 2019.

Statistics show that the trade tide may be shifting. Official data cited by the report indicate that India’s exports to China rose by more than 28 % year‑on‑year in the April‑June quarter, reaching $5.55 billion.

Nevertheless, diplomatic overtures have been fragile. A senior Indian commerce official’s planned trip to Beijing was postponed amid renewed border‑related talks, highlighting how geopolitical sensitivities still loom large.

On the home front, New Delhi has already taken steps to soften some of the regulatory pressure on Chinese firms. In March, the government tweaked its foreign‑direct‑investment rules (Press Note 2 of 2026 superseding Press Note 3 of 2020), and later allowed Bharat Heavy Electricals to source 21 categories of critical gear from China for a five‑year window. In June, four Chinese‑linked power‑equipment makers operating in India – TBEA Energy, Nanjing Electric India, New Northeast Electric India, and Taikai Electric India – were granted a two‑year exemption from registration requirements for certain government tenders.

All told, the upcoming BRICS summit could become a turning point. If India manages to get Beijing to back‑track on its high‑tech export bans, the ripple effect could be felt across auto factories, solar farms and the expanding HVDC network that promises to carry clean power from remote wind‑and‑solar sites to bustling cities.

But the path is anything but smooth. Negotiations will have to balance strategic mistrust, domestic pressure from industry groups, and the broader geopolitical chessboard that frames Indo‑Chinese relations. Whether the summit’s informal talks will yield concrete concessions remains to be seen, but the very fact that the issue is on the agenda signals a shift from silent frustration to active engagement.