The recently-held informal summit between the Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi included an announcement about the setting up of a high-level economic and trade dialogue mechanism to discuss issues related to trade imbalances, investment, and services. The high-level trade-centric mechanism comes as no surprise, given the galloping trade deficit between the two countries and the pending status of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) negotiations since 2012.