Tunnel Boring Machines Are the Lithography Machines of Construction
| AUTHOR | Pranay Kotasthane |
| DATE | October 20, 2026 |
| CATEGORIES | China Geoeconomics Trade and Industrial Policy |
On October 19, China’s Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs announced export controls on tunnel boring machines (TBMs). The list covers every major type of TBM: earth pressure balance and slurry shields, and open, single-shield and double-shield rock machines. It also covers the critical parts: cutterheads, screw conveyors, segment erectors, and main drive systems. Even the technology to remanufacture these machines is covered. Walking excavators and wet shotcrete machines designed for altitudes above 3,000 metres are also restricted. These controls come into force on November 18.
Now, why would anyone weaponise construction equipment? Because TBMs are the photolithography machines of construction. Most of them cost between $10 million and $100 million, and only a handful of firms worldwide can make more than a few tens of them every year. Metro lines, hydropower tunnels, and mountain highways depend on them. Like ASML’s machines in the chip world, these are scarce, expensive, and hard to replace at short notice.
A standard TBM costs about $20 million; price rises roughly with diameter, and a 16-metre machine can cost $76 million or more. See this cost explainer from an equipment maker.
Amit Kumar and I wrote about China’s earlier, informal hold on TBM shipments to India in January 2025. Read it here.
We have seen this movie before. In late 2024, TBMs made by a German firm Herrenknecht’s China unit for Indian projects were held up at Chinese customs. That was an informal squeeze. The new announcement formalises such restrictions
The design of these controls matters more than the list. Exports to “sensitive countries and regions that have disputes with China” now need a licence. The notice names no country, but India, with its unresolved boundary dispute with China, is obviously a major target. Exports to everyone else can go ahead after registration, but the exporter and the end user must promise not to pass the machines on to those disputed countries. Organisations outside China are also barred from transferring China-origin items there without a licence.
My colleague Amit Kumar maps China’s growing toolkit of export controls, market restrictions and countermeasures in China is Armed for an Age of Protracted Economic Warfare.
So these controls apply not just to Chinese manufacturers but to any firm exporting from China, including foreign companies that use China as a production base. A German or Japanese TBM maker that builds in China now has to formally ask Beijing’s permission before shipping to India. That makes a factory in China a liability for any firm that wants to serve the Indian market.
The high-altitude shotcrete machines are also revealing. Equipment built for work above 3,000 metres is exactly what tunnelling and road-building in the Himalaya need. For instance, Leh is at a height of 3500 metres above sea level.
In the short term, some Indian projects may face delays. In the long term, this is good news for India. Herrenknecht, the leading global player, already builds TBMs at its plant in Chennai, including the two largest machines ever ordered in India, for Mumbai’s Versova-Dahisar Link Road. Beijing has now handed it, and its competitors, one more reason to expand capacity in India rather than in China. Every component maker supplying these firms faces the same choice.
On why Beijing’s export controls tend to backfire in the long run, see my seven points on China’s rare earth gameplay.
Our earlier analysis of trade data showed that India had already been diversifying its TBM imports away from China since 2020. These controls will speed that up. And as with critical minerals, every restriction Beijing imposes signals to the rest of the world that alternatives are worth paying for, even if they seem constly in the short run.
The larger lesson is that China is no longer a reliable business partner. Firms that still treat it as a neutral manufacturing base for global exports are mispricing the risk. India’s task is to make the move easy for them through predictable approvals, reliable power, and quick customs clearance for imported components.