The message wasn’t subtle: India would eat the economic cost if it meant shrinking China’s grip on strategically sensitive sectors. Both sides still have large forces sitting across the wider frontier, and the territorial dispute itself hasn’t moved an inch. After the post-2020 travel restrictions, manufacturers couldn’t get the specialists they needed in the country to install, run and fix Chinese machinery. But the dependence isn’t symmetrical. India and China will keep competing – militarily, technologically, diplomatically, for regional influence, for supply chains, for manufacturing investment.