A Licence on the Tunnel: How China's TBM Controls Turn a Small Import into a Big Infrastructure Risk

The Import Bill Is Small. The Chokepoint Is Not. Here is the

number that misleads. India's imports of tunnelling machinery from China fell from 18 million dollars in FY23 to just 0.8 million dollars in FY26. Set against a 69 billion dollar trade deficit with China in the first half of 2026-27, that looks trivial. But the risk in China's new export controls has nothing to do with the size of the import bill. It lies in who controls the timing of a few critical machines.

Who is

actually exposed Start with the projects that cannot simply blast their way through. Urban metros. Tunnel-boring machines are used because conventional blasting is too dangerous under dense neighbourhoods. A metro contractor whose machine is delayed at a border pays idle crews, rented equipment and penalty clauses, while commuters wait longer for the line. The bullet-train corridor. The 508-km Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail line includes a 7-km undersea tunnel.

The TBMs used for it weigh about 3,000 tonnes. These are bespoke machines, not off-the-shelf equipment. Border tunnels. The controls specifically cover machinery for high-altitude construction above 3,000 metres. That is exactly the terrain of India's Himalayan border roads and tunnels.

The mechanism:

a licence as a dial From 18 November, the rules differ by destination. Exports to sensitive countries and regions in dispute with China require a licence under China's Export Control Law and its dual-use regulations. Shipments to other destinations go through a registration-based certification.

India, with its border dispute, is likely to be on the licensing side. A licence is not a ban. It is a dial. Beijing can approve quickly, slowly or not at all, without ever announcing an embargo. India has already felt this dial.

In 2024, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal told German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck that China was blocking TBMs built in China by the German firm Herrenknecht AG. As reported, the company described extraordinary customs-clearance difficulties.

The machines reached India only in March 2026, as relations eased. A Western brand did not protect the supply chain, because the factory was in China. The controls also extend to components such as cutterheads and main drive systems.

That means machines assembled elsewhere can still be exposed if those parts come from Chinese suppliers.

The de-risking path India's response is under way, but it is a race against project timelines:

• Localisation. Herrenknecht is building a plant in Chennai, which moves production out of the chokepoint.
• Incentives. The Centre is pushing a 1.2 billion dollar manufacturing incentive scheme to build domestic capacity in capital goods.
• Trade defences. India opened 18 anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probes in July-September 2026, more than any other country, with China the largest target. The harder task is building suppliers for components, not just assembly. A domestic TBM assembled around imported cutterheads remains exposed to the same dial. For GS3, the insight is that supply-chain resilience is measured in critical days, not just import shares. A tiny import line can carry a large share of a project's risk.