India’s imports from China surged across various sectors in 2025-26, highlighting critical dependencies that threaten domestic industry growth and national economic stability.
India’s imports from China surged across a range of industrial and consumer goods in 2025-26, underscoring both the depth of India’s dependence on Chinese supply chains and the pressure it is placing on domestic manufacturers. According to data tabled by the commerce ministry in the Lok Sabha, engineering goods remained the largest import category and rose 18.6% to $75.82bn from $63.95bn a year earlier.
The same government figures showed textile imports climbing 22.5% to $4.46bn, toy imports increasing 20.7% to $350m and plastics rising 5.8% to $6.71bn. The ministry said China supplies India with a mix of raw materials, intermediate goods, capital equipment and advanced technologies rather than finished products alone.
In Parliament, the government framed the trade surge against concerns that low-cost Chinese goods, including textiles, toys, plastics, electronics and light engineering items, could distort the market and squeeze Indian manufacturers, especially small and medium-sized enterprise clusters in Tamil Nadu such as Karur, Tiruppur, Coimbatore and Erode. Commerce and Industry Minister Jitin Prasada said India also imports key inputs such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and rare earth elements, which are needed for clean energy technologies, electric vehicles, electronics and semiconductors.
The issue fits a broader pattern of heavy import reliance. Business Standard reported in December that the Global Trade Research Initiative expected India’s trade deficit with China to widen to $106bn in 2025, driven by faster growth in imports than exports. That report said nearly 80% of India’s imports from China were concentrated in electronics, machinery, organic chemicals and plastics, while another study cited in Business Standard and other reports found China accounts for a far larger share of India’s industrial goods imports than of total imports overall. The government has also moved to tighten quality controls, testing requirements and anti-dumping enforcement in an effort to curb duty evasion, misdeclaration and substandard imports.
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