India Continues To Resist "Made In China" And Bilateral Trade Prospects Continue To Be Under Pressure

Since the border conflict between China and India, Indian people have begun to boycott made in China activities, and even hit, smash and burn Chinese goods. Gao Feng, a Chinese spokesman, said at a news conference that China has not taken any restrictive and discriminatory measures against India's products and services. India's relevant practices violate the relevant rules of the WTO and India's commitments in the WTO. It is hoped that India will immediately correct the discriminatory practices against China and Chinese enterprises.

The frenzied boycott has resulted in the backlog of goods from many Chinese suppliers in Indian ports and delayed customs clearance. However, it has a huge impact on Indian Importers.

According to the report of the times of India, many garment exporters from Tirupur, an important textile town in southern India, said that due to the "negative" customs clearance strategy adopted by the Indian customs on Chinese products, the buttons, zippers and embroidery products from China were not allowed to be released. As a result, Indian garment exporters who needed these accessories could not produce them completely, so they could only sell them without buttons The shirts with buttons, shorts without zippers and brassieres without embroidery were delivered.

The president of a local export industry association told the times of India that the boycott strategy adopted by Indian customs against Chinese products has led to the holding up of accessories from China for nearly 20 days. However, the problem is that 90% of the local garment accessories are from China, so the local garment export industry has fallen into anxiety.

According to official data, in 2019, India's imports of goods from China amounted to 515.63 billion yuan, accounting for about 80% of the bilateral trade volume between China and India. However, since the outbreak of the epidemic, India's economy has shown signs of malaise - according to the S & P analysis report, India's economy will shrink by 5% this year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also predicted that among the major economies, India is the country with the largest economic downturn this year. The IMF's forecast for India's economic growth this year has been revised down from + 1.9% to - 4.5%, which will be the worst performance of India's economy since the oil crisis in the late 1970s.

In order to further boycott made in China, India's Ministry of Commerce and industry said that it would hold a meeting with Amazon, flipkart and other e-commerce platform operators on July 8 to discuss the implementation progress of the new products on the shelves since August 1 and the implementation progress of the goods that have been put on the shelves since October 1.

The e-commerce platform participating in the above-mentioned meeting said that commodity labeling involves various manufacturers and sellers, and the new measures should consider the operation time of the merchants, and hope to implement them in stages. The Ministry of Commerce and industry of India continues to consult businesses and platforms and will target the implementation time mentioned above. The current regulation for bulk unpacked goods is the place of origin free of standards. In this regard, the Ministry of Commerce and industry's Bureau of domestic industry and trade promotion (dpiit) said that it would work with the Ministry of consumer affairs of India, which is in charge of commodity packaging and labeling, to study and revise the law and take a separate case.

With regard to the practice that products sold on Indian e-commerce platforms will be marked with the origin of goods, China's trade may be greatly affected because most of the commodities circulated on these platforms come from China.

At present, some Indian Importers are looking for sources other than China, as the Indian government led action aims to reduce the heavy dependence on imports from China. In addition, India is also conducting anti-dumping investigations on more than 100 products imported from China.

In this regard, relevant people pointed out that in the economic downturn, maintaining an open and rational attitude towards Chinese products is a good way for India to get out of its predicament and promote its economic development, while blind boycott will only make itself suffer greater losses.