To understand the real impact of US President Donald Trump’s recent visit to China on India, the key lies in clearly grasping the essence of this visit. In the China-US summit briefing released on the White House website on May 17, the most striking new US official characterisation of bilateral relations is the phrase “constructive strategic and stable China-US relationship”, which fully adopts the Chinese formulation, including the English wording. This strongly suggests that Washington has completed a paradigm-level shift in its foreign strategy, one that could have comprehensive implications for India.Trump’s visit may signal completion of America’s grand strategic shiftIn the decade before Trump’s second term, the underlying logic of the US strategy toward China was rather clear — mobilising its allies, quasi-allies, and partners to jointly contain China, thereby consolidating and maintaining the US dominated global order. Therefore, whether it was the Obama-era “pivot to Asia”, Trump’s first-term “Indo-Pacific strategy”, or the Biden administration’s “small yard, high fence”, they were all essentially different versions of this same logic. Under this framework, India was seen as a key piece to counterbalance China. To a large extent, the US changing its policy slogan from “Asia-Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific” was precisely to highlight India’s pillar role. The essence of this US arrangement is the “chess piece model”, meaning the US provides allies and partners with security commitments, technical support, market access, and even cash incentives in exchange for their geopolitical cooperation, or even obedience. From the junior partner’s perspective, this means that as long as they assume the role assigned by the US, they can obtain all-round US support and guarantees, band-wagoning to gain the upper hand over China.However, the premises supporting this “chess piece model” up to now have become difficult to sustain. In Trump’s second term, the costs of multiple rounds of trade wars with China, chip blockades, and maritime restrictions are laid out before the White House – rare earth product supply disruptions, collapse of agricultural exports, and technology ban against China even accelerating the latter’s breakthroughs in key areas. Facing this situation, the US easily concludes that pushing China so harsh is such a bad deal that costs way more than it gains, and it would be better to find a balance point for coexistence with China. It was against this backdrop, that the US has naturally lost interests in investing in and supporting the regional “chess pieces”. Trump’s visit to China is a reconfirmation of this major change. During the visit, what China and the US reached was not a breakthrough-style thaw, but a framework consensus of “maintaining stability amid competition.” This precisely indicates that the US has completed its shift, with its diplomatic strategic focus changing from “how to mobilise junior partners to confront China” to “how to maximise gains while stabilising China”. In this context, the “blood bag model” has become the policy choice of the Trump administration – since it cannot profit by confronting China, it now turns to maximise the utilisation of the junior partners, exploiting their anxiety toward China. The US wants to convert the relations to makes them continuously dependent and pay a high premium for that dependence.The “chess piece model” and the “blood bag model” have a fundamental difference: in the former, allies are still chess pieces with partial autonomy, while in the latter, they are merely repeatedly exploited and discarded after use. Only by understanding this distinction can one decipher the seemingly contradictory phenomena in the current and future international landscape: China and the US continuously release signals of détente on the surface, but the US keeps escalating its security rhetoric when it comes to one-on-one conversation toward its junior partner. There is a clear logic behind this. If China is no longer portrayed as a terrifying threat, the junior partners lose their source of anxiety, and the US loses the pretext to “bleed” its allies. At the same time, the US is not willing have an open confrontation vis-à-vis China, because it is simply unwilling to bear the high costs that confrontation inevitably entail. The US’s optimal solution is to maintain a “tense but not out of control” relationship with China, exploiting allies’ sense of threat as a leverage to harvest protection fees. This point is actually the key to understanding the direction of the entire US foreign policy after Trump’s visit to China.The real risks facing IndiaOnce the US foreign strategy paradigm shifts, the main risks facing India change accordingly. Viewing China as India’s greatest external threat is rather common practice in India. But as long as one looks at where India’s external shocks and pressures have actually come from in recent years, it is not difficult to see that the view of “treating China as the biggest enemy” either stems from lack of strategic imagination or is blinded by deliberately created illusions – this misleading cognition locks India’s attention on hypothetical threats, but allows a greater and more real threat to repeatedly exact costs from India. So what is the real threat facing India? It is the quadruple shocks that the US exerts on India under the “blood bag model”.The first shock is about energy. The most visible case concerns the recent episode around Iran. The Trump administration, knowing full well their military strikes on Iran might lead to the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, never considered the impact on India – 90% of India’s liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), more than half of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) and its crude oil depends on this waterway. During the escalation of the conflict, the Trump administration also keep strengthening sanctions on Iran, forcing India to abandon discounted Iranian crude oil. Even more interestingly, although Trump often boasts his personal relations with Putin, when it comes to India’s purchase of Russian oil, he turns unprecedentedly tough, not only linking India’s purchase to secondary sanctions, but even imposing a 25% punitive tariff. Such operation seems contradictory, but the underlying logic is rather simple and coherent – no matter how the Iran conflict turns out, and no matter whether Russia and the US reconcile, what matters is forcing countries like India, which are unprepared, to buy overpriced US oil and gas.While India suffers in the inflation caused by higher import bills, US energy business become the biggest winners. This looks like an energy crisis spilling over from geopolitical conflict, but in essence, it is a dependence crisis manufactured by the US. The second shock is about arms sales. Often, even if many US geostrategic maneuvers were not directed against India, they catalysed a series of regional conflicts, forcing India into the loop of “security anxiety-arms procurement”. Whether it is the “Indo-Pacific strategy” which lured India into confronting China in the Himalaya frontier, or in South Asian regional conflicts, using India’s trust in the US to play between India and Pakistan, none deviate from this logic. After each crisis escalates, the US with the arms dealers behind it immediately use “deteriorating regional situation” as a leverage to sell India overpriced arms such as the F-35. In other words, the US approaches India as a partner, while deliberately amplifying India’s security anxiety, then peddling the antidote to “relieve” the anxiety. In other words, it is the US who set the fire, sold the fire extinguisher, give the price, and then the ones who buy the extinguisher still have to say “thank you”.The third shock concerns technological squeeze. This is actually heavier and deeper than the previous two, and also much more difficult to solve. The SWIFT network, artificial intelligence computing power, cloud services, semiconductor and underlying operating systems – India has little to no technological backup in all above areas. For a long time, the US has been continuously siphoning talents from India, causing a semi-permanent brain drain there, but has never wanted India to develop local technological and industrial capabilities. For example, India’s growing industry of Global Capability Centers (GCCs), due to its potential damage to the white-collar job creation in the US, is likely to become a major target in the near future. This line of policy logic to contain India’s advanced service industrial has already been tellingly demonstrated in the Trump’s H-1B policy. It is not difficult to imagine that once the US “blood bag model” is fully activated, India may be even more vulnerable to various “secondary sanctions”, “data compliance”, and “security reviews” that can be potentially imposed from the US side.The fourth shock is about capital extraction. Even more alarming is that the US is forcing and luring India into making huge US-bound investment commitments. Of course, India is not the only “blood bag” under pressure – Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are all unlikely to be spared either. However, the key difference is that, compared to economies that have already fully industrialised and own surplus capital domestically, India is still in the early stage of economic take-off and its domestic capital scarce and precious. So, every penny drained from India comes at a much higher opportunity cost than for other blood bags, and thus may inflict much greater damage.As a country that is more strategically independent, India should have been better able to resist US pressure. The problem is that many interest groups in India are already highly tied to the US. Once under pressure, these groups’ interests tend to align more with the US than with India. Why, when India has already been in a serious balance-of-payment crisis, are many Indian riches still investing overseas massively? Because converting rupee assets into dollars to evade the local currency depreciation best serves their interests, along with those of the US. Putting these four shocks together, it is not hard to detect the reoccurring spirit behind: the US does not need, and does not care about, India’s basic interests. The US not only gives no regard to India’s security environment, energy supply disruptions, technological deficit, and capital flight, but has the very reason to aggravate and exploit them. This may be the biggest difference between the “chess piece model” and the “blood bag model” – chess pieces still need to be kept in functioning conditions, while blood bags are often used and then discarded.India’s realistic choice: Identify the real threatThe very first step to mitigate the mounting risks is not to rush into policy choices, but a more fundamental recognitive rerouting –identifying who the true antagonist is. Over the past decade or so, India’s strategic discourse has built around an oversimplified binary narrative: China is a threat, and whatever it does to India carries negative connotation, while the US is a partner and its actions are more conducive to India. This narrative moves smooth emotionally, but in fact it may be exactly the opposite.As long as one returns to the data-based reality, who helps and who exploits India becomes clear. For example, in recent years, India’s consumer electronics industry has made tremendous progress, becoming the poster child of the ‘Make in India’ initiative. It also has become one of the few industries capable of earning additional foreign exchange for India. As a matter of fact, the rise of India’s consumer electronics has been built on China’s capital, technology, talent, and, of course, its stable supply of components and parts. However, if one is blinded by the “binary narrative”, it is very likely to overlook China’s vital and formative contributions to India’s industrial rise, only preoccupying with the trade deficit, which has only been seen as the proof of Chinese exploitation. The very same logic applies to active pharmaceutical ingredients, photovoltaic components, and home appliance parts, It is unfortunate that many in India not only fail to feel the tremendous Chinese push, but blindly follow the script written by the US, constantly repeating the clichés of “trade deficit” and “dependence risks”. Think about it: why doesn’t Vietnam complain about the “China deficit” like many in India, and why doesn’t Mexico complain about “dependence risks”? By contrast, the supposedly friendly interaction between the US and India has ultimately materialised into overpriced fossil energy, expensive weapons systems, perennial brain drain, and the constant threat of tariff penalties, immigration restrictions, outsourcing controls, and even verbal insults. On one side is China, which provides building blocks for India’s industrialisation with minimal political conditions attached; on the other is the US, which tried every means to harvest India like a “blood bag”. However, many in India may find it difficult to accept this conclusion. Doing so would require them to acknowledge that an entire generation has been fundamentally mistaken in its strategic orientation. The psychological cost of such an admission is high, and it may be the primary reason why genuine introspection has been so limited in India’s strategic community. But, the cold realities of international politics never reward psychological comfort – they only reward strategic clarity. Avoiding the introspection will not make the challenge disappear; it will only make the challenge return to the table in a more cruel way. In fact, what India needs to do is not to reinvent the wheel, but return to the core concept of its founding tradition – strategic autonomy. Strategic autonomy is not strategic laziness that requires compromise on everything, nor is it an egalitarianist treatment towards the powers, but a thorough clarity based on national interests, not blinded by any preconceived notions, and after accurately recognising gains and losses, making the best choices without being bound by any side. First of all, clearly recognising the danger of the US under the “blood bag model”. This does not mean confronting the US, but maintaining necessary security distance from the US, especially after it shifts from the “chess piece model”. This requires India to stop treating its “special relationship with the United States” as the default premise and starting point for decision-making. Instead, it must establish “firewalls” in key areas – such as industrial development, diplomatic strategy, arms procurement, energy imports, and financial infrastructure – to protect itself from potential US interference. Only then can India move out of Washington’s line of fire. After all, at the policy level, strategic autonomy fundamentally means having the ability to remain free from harm and coercion.Second, developing a more solid base for Sino-Indian cooperation. China will not provide India with security guarantees, nor will it demand strategic obedience in return. What China can offer are practical, measurable benefits, including the world’s most cost-effective solutions for industrialisation, reliable infrastructure capabilities, access to a vast market, and investment without political strings attached. Naturally, these benefits will not come for free. In exchange, India needs to provide a clear, transparent business environment supported by credible political assurances. While this is only the most basic requirement for economic and trade relations, it has often not been adequately met in the past, leaving considerable room for improvement.Third, activating multilateral platforms such as BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the G20. In the short term, these platforms cannot challenge the dollar system or the Western-dominated international order. Their real value lies in providing India with credible alternatives. Regrettably, for many years India has often positioned itself as a “China opponent” in these non-Western forums, sometimes even taking satisfaction in demonstrating its distinctiveness to the West. This approach now appears counterproductive. After all, when India faces U.S. pressure, the absence of effective cooperation with China leaves it without real alternative options. The existence of an exit option is often more important than whether it is actually used.ConclusionTrump’s visit to China is a mirror. What it reflects is not merely a specific adjustment in China-U.S. relations, but a paradigm-level shift in America’s foreign strategy. For India, the old map can no longer chart the path to new horizons. Continuing to rely on “chess piece model” thinking – calculating how to profit from China-US confrontation or how to extract more commitments from Washington – will only exacerbate India’s hemorrhaging under the new paradigm. True strategic clarity means acknowledging the real dangers of the existing dependent system, identifying the true antagonist, and rebuilding a set of policy choices that match reality, guided by national interests rather than emotions and narratives. This path is difficult, but the cost of avoiding it is greater. Keji Mao is an analyst at the International Cooperation Center, the founder of the South Asia Research Brief, and visiting fellow at the Harvard-Yenching Institute.