India, March 11 -- The Union Cabinet on Tuesday decided to revoke a 2020 order - Press Note 3 (PN3) - that banned foreign investment from countries with which India shares a land border. The decision followed hostilities with Chinese armed forces in Galwan Valley after which India announced several steps to disallow Chinese companies from doing business in India. The latest order will now allow Chinese capital - subject to some limits such as controlling stakes - to resume investment in India. Habitual or opportunistic hawks will scoff at the decision, but it should be seen as a pragmatic detente with the world's second-largest economy and by far its largest manufacturing powerhouse. If India is to make progress in manufacturing, it cannot afford a self-inflicted decoupling from China. China controls critical supplies, not just inputs like rare earths, and also holds a near monopoly on skilled workforces necessary to train workers on cutting-edge shop floors, such as in electronics. The people and companies running iPhone manufacturing plants in India will agree. The logic of working closely with China has always made sense. It makes even more sense today when India-bound foreign investments from advanced economies have been sluggish and the Trump Administration is trying to arm-twist capital and countries to invest in the US. China's economic prowess and its indispensability for India's manufacturing ambitions do not mean it will willingly help India become an economic superpower. From the Indian side, there will be concerns about safeguarding strategic interests, especially in critical and evolving areas of electronic surveillance and data safety. This is in addition to intermittent Chinese tactics of perpetrating hostilities on the border and its deep strategic relations with Pakistan. Valid and pressing as these concerns are, they do not justify a prolonged economic decoupling with China. India must maximise its economic engagement with China while trying its best to counteract all valid concerns. The most important questions regarding Sino-Indian economic relations were best framed in the 2023-24 Economic Survey. "Is it possible to plug India into the global supply chain without plugging itself into the China supply chain? and (b) what is the right balance between importing goods and importing capital from China?" Now that the government has answered the second question, it should work on the first....