The speed of the 64-year-old Thirunavkarsu rotary plant in southern Tamil Nadu state in southern India slowed significantly.

Viscose yarn is a popular material for making braided garments – the storage library he now produces, as orders at local factories fell by nearly 40% last month.

This is because China's imports of materials have become cheaper at 15 rupees ($0.18; £0.13) and flooded Indian ports.

With Donald Trump placing tariffs on Chinese goods entering the United States at up to 145%, Chinese manufacturers are starting to look for alternative markets.

Textile manufacturers in India say they are the first to bear the brunt as Chinese producers dump yarns into key production hubs.

Although China is the leading producer of viscose yarn, India has the most In viscose yarn, the country needs only imports supply gap locally.

Millers like Thirunavkarsu are worried that their yarn will not be attacked in such competition.

"We can't match those rates. Our raw materials aren't that cheap," he said.

Jagadesh Chandran of the South Indian Spinning Mills Association told the BBC in the textile hubs of Pallipalayam, Karur and Tirupur in southern India that textile hubs in southern India are "slow production". Many say they will be forced to scale further if the problem is not resolved.

The Chinese ambassador to India to India has sent assurances to India that his country will not dump products and actually hopes to buy more high-quality Indian products for Chinese consumers.

"We will not participate in market dumping or slash competition, nor will we disrupt industry and economic development in other countries," he wrote in an article in the Indian Express.

But anxiety about dumping is spread throughout India’s sector, as China (the largest economy in Asia) is the world’s largest exporter of all industrial supplies, from textiles and metals to chemicals and rare minerals.

Although drugs (later mobile phones, laptops and semiconductor chips) are exempt from much-needed tariffs, most of China's exports still involve Trump's 145% tariff wall. It is these commodities that are expected to chase other markets such as India.

According to Japanese broker Nomura, their sudden inflow will prove that emerging Asian economies are “very destructive”, his research earlier revealed that China was flooding even before Donald Trump took office earlier this year.

In 2024, the investigation into China's unfair imports rose to a record high. Data from the World Trade Organization (WTO) showed that nearly 200 complaints were filed against China at the forum, including 37 in India.

India, in particular, has a great dependence on Chinese raw materials and intermediate goods and may be hit hard. Its trade deficit with China - the difference between imports and exports has surged to $100 billion (£7.5 billion). Imports jumped 25% in March, powered by electronics, batteries and solar cells.

In response, India's Ministry of Trade has set up a committee to track the influx of cheap Chinese goods, and its quasi-judicial department has probed imports from various departments, including Viscose Yarn.

India has also recently imposed a 12% tax on certain steel imports, known locally as a safeguard obligation, to help stop cheap goods that are primarily from China, prompting some Indian factories to reduce their expansion.

Despite such protection - A loud marketing campaign by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government aims to promote local manufacturing - India has found it difficult to reduce its dependence on China, even when border tensions between two neighbors peak after 2020, imports are rising.

Biswajit Dhar, a trade expert in Delhi, said this was because the government had only achieved "limited success" and its plan to turn India into a world factory through things like production-related subsidies. India continues to rely heavily on China's intermediate products, which enter the finished product.

While Western multinationals like Apple are increasingly looking to diversify their assembly lines from China, India still relies on Chinese components to make these phones. As a result, imports in industries like electronics have risen sharply, exacerbating their trade deficits.

Ajay Srivastava, founder of the Global Trade Research Project (GTRI) think tank, said India’s deficit deficit is a “worrying story”, even more so, because despite its weak currency, its exports to China fell to 2014 levels below 2014 levels, which should help exporters.

"This is not just a trade imbalance. It's a structural warning. Our industrial growth, including through the PLI (Incentives for Production Links) program, is fueling imports rather than building domestic depth," Srivastava wrote in a social media post. In other words, these subsidies do not help India export more.

“We will not be able to bridge this deficit without bridging our competitiveness gap.”

Given the opportunity raised by the U.S.-China trade tensions, India needs to act quickly to do this. Nomura said this is also because countries with significant growth in imports from China usually tend to see the biggest slowdown in manufacturing growth.

Akash Prakash of the capital of Omanza agreed. He wrote in a column in Business Standards that the key reason for underinvestment of private companies in India is because of their fear of being “influenced by China.” This view is also confirmed by the latest research by the rating agency ICRA.

China is under increasing pressure due to concerns that Chinese dumping is becoming more common, and the EU seeking companies like Beijing will not be flooded, and China is now in a hurry to ensure newer trading partners outside the United States.

Mr Dahl said China wants to completely change the narrative, “it is trying to clean up in the censorship.”

Mr Dhar said that despite Beijing’s guarantees, Delhi should use a thaw relationship with its larger neighbors to have proper dialogue on its firm dumping stance.

“This is a matter of India having to have the flag like most Western countries.”

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