Is It Easy To Reduce Trade With China?

Indians call for boycott of Chinese goods after fatal border clashes. It seems easy to say that boycott Chinese product, but is this really easy to reduce trade with China? What you all readers say, can you easily boycott China? Can you boycott your Chinese phones, which some of you are using right now?

    

It seems easy my dear friend but actually its not. Because made in India products are not successful much that we start to export our products. Overall efforts are being made to reduce India-China trade but is it possible that we can do it? Because on one side everybody tweets on Twitter, Facebook etc. that boycott China and on the other side Chinese products like mobile phones are selling in minutes.

According to the report by Gateway House,  chinese smartphones brands, led by  xiaomi, vivo and oppo, are market leaders in India with an estimated 72% share put together, leaving Samsung and Apple. If I talk about a lower middle class family who have a monthly income of 15,000-20,000, then they have the only option to buy a Chinese phone as it is cheaper and provides good facilities like other expensive phones. So it is very difficult for these peoples to boycott Chinese product.

The dominance of China on our smartphones industry is not going to end easily. According to the international data corporation, 'India sales of those top Chinese smartphone brands totalled more than $16 billion in 2019'.

Boycott of China is a good plan but we cannot expect from common man to help us in this, because most people don't even know that which is Chinese company. Indian government will have to force Indians not to buy Chinese products. Instead, purchase either Indian or other alternative products. By the way starting has begin for that because, Indian government officials said they plan to impose higher trade barriers and raise import duties on around 300 products from China.

The decision will target imports worth $8-10 billion with the aim of deterring non-essential lower quality imports which render Indian products uncompetitive. Some Indians think that Chinese exports industry depends on India but its not true because according to Indian prospective only 5% of India's total export goes to China and 14% of total imports come from China only.

'Recently maruti and Bajaj Auto said', 'banning Chinese imports for raising tariffs on them will hurt industry as well as consumer'. 

Because if they will not be able to import components from China at a cheaper rate, then they will have to import it from USA and Europe, which will be a lot more expensive and in the end consumer will have to bear this all cost.

Indian pharma sector is the pride of our country as pharmaceutical export from India stood at US $19. 13 billion in 2018-19 and reached US $13. 69 billion in 2019-20 (till January 2020). And it is expected to grow by 30% to reach US $20 billion by 2020. And here also India imports two-thirds of its active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) from China.

Now government announces Rs 10,000 crore to boost domestic API production. But until this done we will have to depend China for API's. Therefore scope of boycott China do not seems strong.

Will Indian boycott hurt China?

According to me its not because India's import from China are just 3% of China's total exports. More importantly, China's imports from India are less than 1% of its total imports. 

China has given a statement on global times:

'China's GDP is about five times that of India's. With such a gap, how could it be easy for a smaller economy to sanction a large one? India will suffer more losses if it launches a #trade war against China'.

The bitter thing is that they are rightly saying that if trade war happens, then we have to bear a big initial loss. Then why are we trying a self dependent India?

Self dependent is a initiative that takes time to show its impacts. We have to think with cold mind and with long term planning that how can we end our dependence on China. This is not going to happen all at once.

What you readers think? Is it easy to end our dependence on China or will it take long process?