One interesting thing about China's attempt to become more local is that it results in the world having no qualms about shutting them out.
China wants to substitute all imports locally. Like every single thing. To a fault. They spent money, with government intervention - to invent the one part of the ball point pen they didn't make: the pen tip.
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With that level of focus on not importing, China also makes it difficult for foreign players to operate within China - it's not impossible, but there are issues.
When Apollo Tyres wanted to buy the US listed Cooper Tires, the China factory of Cooper famously refused to let any of the US people in at all, because they didn't want Apollo to take over. Cooper owned the factory, but couldn't get in.
If the country is that level paranoid about having imports (many foreign brands they use are actualy manufactured in China itself) you have to wonder why they are surprised when other countries want to reduce imports from China.
I can't sell to you, but you want to sell more to me. Then I start wondering why I should be dependent on you at all. Typically, there's a quid pro quo; If I tax your mobile phone exports, you'll tax my food exports etc. But if no one can export to China, there's no leverage.
In the background of a world-pandemic, putting more taxes on imports from China, or disallowing their companies to buy your companies; this is fair game, you would think - because China's done that to other countries' imports even when there was no pandemic.
The more China tries to become Self Reliant, the more it will find itself unable to understand why everyone feels no qualms in trying to avoid buying from it.
In this context, the Indian push to going local should be to offset the extreme subsidies countries like China or Korea give their exporters. We are quite heavy importers - so it makes total sense to tax imports a lot more to go local, plus there will be jobs.
My view here has changed but only temporarily in the wake of a massive crisis. Eventually any import taxes should only be to offset subsidies given by other countries. If china does a duty drawback of 10%, charge 15% on those imports, etc.
