For years, India’s reliance on China for rare earths–the minerals that power electric vehicles, smartphones, wind turbines and missiles–has been an unspoken strategic vulnerability.

Today, New Delhi is trying to flip that dependency into leverage. Whether it succeeds will say a great deal about the credibility of its much-vaunted “strategic autonomy.”

When Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Delhi last week, Beijing pledged to help meet India’s rare-earth needs. The timing was no accident.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to travel to China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit at the end of August, just weeks before India hosts leaders of the Quad–the very grouping designed to contain Chinese influence. Rarely do rival blocs align so neatly.

India has not “solved” its dependency problem. What it has done, rather shrewdly, is reframe Beijing’s tactical concessions as cooperative gestures, without sacrificing room to maneuver.

That Beijing made the promise at all suggests less an act of generosity than a calculation: China wants to tamp down tensions before it hosts Modi at the SCO.

This diplomatic dance has real stakes. Earlier this year, Beijing tightened export licenses on seven categories of rare earths and associated magnets, sending Indian manufacturers into a panic.

Bajaj Auto warned of bottlenecks for electric scooters and cars. Maruti Suzuki flagged delays for new EV launches. The green-tech surge New Delhi dreams of was suddenly held hostage by the same supply chain that underpins China’s own industrial dominance.

India’s response has been twofold. First, play along diplomatically, turning Beijing’s carrot into proof that New Delhi cannot be coerced.

Second, accelerate domestic hedges: new fiscal incentives for rare-earth magnet production, subsidized stockpiling to close the cost gap with Chinese imports, and exploration projects in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha tied to state-owned firms and ambitious private players.

A sovereign rare-earth reserve–modelled on the petroleum reserves–is even under discussion.

All of this fits neatly into the “Atmanirbhar Bharat” doctrine of Indian PM Narendra Modi: the drive for self-reliance as a signal to both adversaries and allies.

India wants China to know it won’t be cornered, and it wants the Quad–and an expanded BRICS+ audience–to see it as a country serious about supply-chain resilience.

A risky gambit

But India’s rare-earth gambit is a high-wire act. Beijing’s pledges are tactical, not structural. They can evaporate as quickly as they are made.

Building domestic capacity will take years for India, if not decades, and the political will to bear higher costs is not guaranteed. For all the symbolism of Modi straddling the SCO and the Quad, the hard truth is that China still controls the minerals that could make or break India’s green-industrial ambitions.

Besides, India’s rare-earth problem is not simply about minerals. It is a test case for how New Delhi manages its place between rival power blocs without being trapped by either.

Within the Quad, India has positioned itself as a central player in securing supply chains and advancing high-tech cooperation. At the July 2025 Quad foreign ministers’ meeting, commitments were reaffirmed on diversifying strategic resources, with the groundwork laid for a leaders’ summit in India later this year.

This framework offers India long-term resilience–alternative supply chains, advanced technology partnerships, and a seat at the table with three of the world’s most advanced economies.

Yet India has also leaned into its role in the SCO, where China and Russia dominate. PM Modi’s planned trip to Tianjin for the SCO summit signals something that often confounds Western observers: India’s willingness to negotiate pragmatically with Beijing, even as it courts Washington and Tokyo.

The symbolism matters. India’s ability to sit at the same table with China and Russia in the SCO while simultaneously reinforcing Quad-led cooperation is more than diplomatic theater.

It reassures domestic audiences that New Delhi is not beholden to the West, while reminding Beijing that India has alternatives–and will use them. Few other middle powers have replicated this agility.

This dual-track approach is not a contradiction; it is design. The Quad is India’s bet on structural alternatives to Chinese supply chains. The SCO is its hedge for short-term deliverables, such as rare-earth access.

If China tightens export controls again, India can lean harder on Quad partners and accelerate domestic production. If Quad momentum stalls, SCO channels provide continuity. In other words, India is building escape routes in both directions.

Hedging against several odds

Critics argue that this hedging risks overstretch: Beijing’s concessions could evaporate overnight, while Quad partners, distracted by their own domestic politics, may prove slow in delivering real alternatives.

That is the cost of strategic autonomy: cooperation without alignment. But India is willing to pay that price because it allows New Delhi to maneuver while others are forced to choose.

This balancing act is not limited to rare earths. It mirrors India’s broader foreign policy pattern–simultaneously participating in BRICS+, I2U2, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and the G20, while never overcommitting to any single bloc.

Rare earths, then, are more than a commodity challenge; they are a litmus test for India’s multi-vector diplomacy.

There is also a Global South dimension. By securing tactical concessions from China while deepening partnerships with the West and regional powers, India signals leadership in navigating structural dependencies.

For emerging economies wrestling with vulnerabilities in minerals, technology, or trade, New Delhi is presenting a playbook: prioritize resource sovereignty, diversify partnerships, industrialize at home–and never be dependent on just one patron.

The question is whether India can sustain this act. For now, rare earths have become both the fault line of its vulnerabilities and the showcase of its diplomatic agility.

What New Delhi does with this moment will define whether it remains merely a clever hedger or emerges as the rule-setter of a new multipolar order.

Already, capitals across Africa and Latin America are studying India’s rare-earth maneuvering with keen interest.

For resource-rich but strategically vulnerable economies, New Delhi’s mix of hedging and capacity-building offers a potential alternative to the binary choice of Beijing’s Belt and Road or Washington’s fragmented supply-chain initiatives.

If India can make this work, it may well set new norms for how smaller economies negotiate with great powers without losing sovereignty.

A complex geopolitical calculation

The contrast with Washington’s experience is instructive.

Earlier this year, the U.S.–China rare-earth standoff descended into predictable brinkmanship: Beijing suspended exports to American firms, disrupting production lines across multiple industries.

By June, a temporary truce allowed shipments to resume, but the volatility underscored the limits of adversarial supply-chain management.

The U.S., despite ample reserves, lacks refining capacity, leaving it dependent on Chinese licensing. India’s takeaway is unmistakable: confrontation only magnifies vulnerability, while carefully calibrated cooperation can deliver breathing room.

This is precisely where India is carving out space. By extracting a rare-earth concession from Beijing through the SCO, even as it deepens long-term options with Quad partners and ramps up domestic exploration, New Delhi has turned what was once a chokepoint into leverage.

It is not posturing as anti-China or anti-U.S., but as an innovator in resilience-building–a neutral but capable actor that can learn from both Western missteps and Beijing’s shifting calculus.

The strategy goes beyond minerals. It is a declaration of intent: India wants to dictate the terms of its industrial destiny without becoming beholden to any single power.

The real test will be whether its domestic rare-earth ecosystem–from mining in Odisha to magnet production and potential reserves–matures quickly enough to reduce reliance on Chinese goodwill.

In the contest for critical minerals, India is no longer a passive consumer. It has emerged as a strategic actor, practicing multi-vector diplomacy to preserve autonomy and sustain its green-industrial momentum. Rare earths, once a vulnerability, have become a platform for projecting India’s geopolitical agility.

If New Delhi can keep pace–investing at home, leveraging concessions abroad, and weaving multiple coalitions into a coherent whole–it won’t just secure its own industrial rise. It will offer a model for how the Global South can manage strategic dependencies in a fractured world order.

This is why India’s rare-earth gamble matters far beyond Delhi and Beijing. It may well define the terms by which emerging economies claim agency in the multipolar century.

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Md Sazzad Amin is Bangla Outlook’s Chief Geopolitical Columnist