India, Aug. 3 -- China-India relations appear to be on the mend. Take a look at the last ten days of July. On July 22, external affairs minister S Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Manila, on the margins of the East Asia Summit. Five days later, foreign secretary Vikram Misri was in Beijing, meeting vice-minister Hua Chunying, where both sides said the customary things about peace and tranquillity along the border. On July 30, our Mandarin-speaking ambassador in Beijing called on a Chinese vice-minister to discuss trade and market access, with Indian pharmaceuticals reportedly on the table. That is a lot in 10 days for two countries that are known to move slowly. Are we warming up to the Chinese too fast? Have we forgotten the winter of Galwan? There are two schools of thought in New Delhi. One says, in criticism of course, that India is "drifting" fast into accommodation with China; that Galwan has been written off and that we are trading our way back into a dependence vis-a-vis China. The second set of arguments holds that Quad is ending, the rupture with the US is permanent, our Indo-Pacific commitments were always thinner than we admitted, and so the reset with China is the real story. Both sides assume that India must eventually settle into one clear posture: Balance China or trade with China. Both have been predicting such a clear decision, one way or another, for two years. But a closer look would suggest that the policy has been more complicated and, I think, in the right direction. Mostly. I think there is a vocabulary problem in our assessment of our relationship with China. Multi-alignment, currently in fashion in New Delhi, describes a choice among partners, while strategic autonomy, also in fashion, describes freedom from other countries' choices. But neither of them describes a single relationship that runs in two opposite directions at the same time. Multi-alignment describes India's behaviour across its partnerships, but says nothing about what happens where a single country is a partner and adversary at the same time. In my upcoming book (India After Nonalignment), I call that political simultaneity. Hypocrisy is when you claim to take a position, but actually have more than one position; simultaneity is when you openly take two positions and face the consequences. It is possible for a country to take two competing positions at the same time, both incurring costs in different ways. China is perhaps the best case in the Indian context, because the balancing and the engagement of China is done by the same government since China is a security challenge, a trade partner and a next door neighbour, and a lot more, all at once. India's ongoing balancing of China is taking place in Ladakh, where roads, bridges, tunnels and logistics hubs have gone up, the Shyok Tunnel among them, with the Arunachal Frontier Highway and the Nyoma airfield behind it. None of it has been paused or slowed, for or because of the reset, even if I personally think we have to do lot more of balancing. And the (re)engagement of China is taking place in the FDI regime. In March this year, the Union Cabinet amended Press Note 3, notified as Press Note 2 of the 2026 series and operationalised from the first of May. Investors carrying up to 10% of Chinese beneficial ownership may now use the automatic route, and proposals in capital goods, electronic components, polysilicon, and ingot-wafer manufacturing are to be cleared in 60 days, so long as Indian residents keep majority ownership and control. Direct Chinese investment still needs prior approval. So, the larger question then is whether the diplomatic activity we witnessed in July, the activity before that, and the activity that is likely to follow means that New Delhi is finally giving up on balancing China? I hope not. It doesn't need to, because New Delhi can balance and engage Beijing at the same time. The national security pundits who argue that China must be balanced are right; so is Indian industry that urges New Delhi to continue with trade. There is no contradiction. In fact, New Delhi is not the only capital that does it. US secretary of state Marco Rubio came to the Quad ministerial meet in Delhi on May 26, 10 days after his President had made a warm State visit to Beijing, almost looking for a G2 with Beijing even though he got nothing in return. Washington works with China using the same two commitments, of balancing and engaging, and calls it statecraft. When we do it, we are accused of "drifting" one way or another. But why does simultaneity with China matter? Here's why. China holds our territory and is undoubtedly India's primary challenge; but it also supplies a great deal of our manufacturing, electronic components, and pharmaceuticals. Cut the economic link with China, and our economy is bound to slow down. India cannot afford that. But if we accept the territorial aggression and nibbling, we end up giving up the deterrence we have spent six years and a lot of money putting back together. This is the predicament of a country large enough to have serious interests on both sides of the balance sheet. Great powers can, perhaps, afford clean choices because they can make up the loss elsewhere. We cannot; not yet. But will simultaneity with China last? It will last only as long as the two commitments can be held in balance, and the ball is as much in India's court as it is in China's court. A serious crisis on the LAC would end it, as has happened in the past. The investment opening and the security posture cannot both survive a shooting incident in Ladakh; one of them is bound to disappear. So, India should balance China and trade with China for as long as both can be done without sacrificing the other. The failure would be having to make that choice in the middle of a crisis, having never thought about it before and planned for it....