The partnership between Reliance Industries Limited and Chinese battery producer Xiamen Hithium is no longer just a topic of speculation within India. It is now being confirmed by various sources within China. While Reliance Industries has consistently avoided addressing the nature of its relationship with the Chinese firm, Hithium, recent reports from Chinese media have finally brought clarity to the situation. The partnership is real, and it’s now being openly discussed in China itself.

During Reliance Industries Annual General Meeting, which took place on August 29th, Anant Ambani and Mukesh Ambani made bold claims to shareholders and the Indian public. Where they declared with “immense pride” that Reliance Industries would become “the world’s only fully integrated, self-sufficient company in New Energy” through their Jamnagar facility, which is expected to become operational by 2026. However, these claims of complete self-reliance are false, as revealed by investigative reports and shipping records.

Shipping records and news exposés clearly show that Hithium has been supplying Reliance Industries with technology valued at millions of dollars since early January 2024. Industry experts suspect that negotiations between Reliance Industries and Xiamen Hithium likely began sometime between Q1 and Q2 of 2023, placing them well before the de-escalation agreement of Xi and Modi of August 2023, where both leaders met briefly on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg.

In September 2025, multiple Chinese news outlets published articles investigating Hithium’s aggressive international expansion strategy. Notably, both pieces specifically highlighted Hithium’s strategic moves within India’s energy sector and confirmed the ongoing partnership between Reliance Industries and Hithium, all of which corroborated earlier reports from international media outlets like CNBC, and Entrepreneur.

What makes this particularly telling is the nature of how Chinese media operates. If Beijing had wanted to suppress or deny these reports, it certainly had the means to do so. The fact that state-aligned Chinese outlets are comfortable publishing stories about this partnership suggests official acknowledgment from the very top. While previously, Reliance Industries could brush off reports about the partnership as mere speculation or unverified rumors, this is no longer an option for them.

For Reliance Industries, this confirmation creates a credibility problem. The company’s claims about being fully self-sufficient in new energy technology now appear questionable at best. Their Jamnagar gigafactory project, presented as an entirely homegrown initiative, clearly relies on substantial Chinese technological support and expertise, leaving Indian policymakers, investors, and citizens to grapple with the implications of India’s technology dependence, national energy security, and dependence on a country accustomed to providing weapons to adversaries like Pakistan.