India – China Trade Imbalance

India and China have a very skewed trade relationship in terms of relative importance of one to the other. China is by far India’s largest trading partner with a total trade of $75 billion between the two countries in 2012, but India doesn’t feature very high in China’s list.

I was curious to see how big a trading partner is for China, and I wasn’t able to get to 2012 numbers, but I did find China’s trading partners for 2011, and here is how that list stands:

Country or Region Exports Imports Total Trade Percentage to Total
European Union 3560 2112 5672 22.14%
United States 3245 1222 4467 17.44%
Hong Kong, China 2680 155 2835 11.07%
ASEAN 1701 1928 3629 14.17%
Japan 1483 1946 3429 13.38%
Republic of Korea 829 1627 2456 9.59%
India 505 234 739 2.88%
Russia 389 403 792 3.09%
Taiwan, China 351 1249 1600 6.25%
Grand Total 25619

Numbers in 100 Millions USD

This is how it looks like in a graph.

China's Trading Partners
China’s Trading Partners

A lot of people have the misconception that since India and China have similar populations, the trade numbers are also the same, but this is simply not true. Like it or not, India is a lot more dependent on China for trade than China is on India. India also runs a massive trade deficit with China, and that’s the reason why India has been and needs to push China to allow import of more Indian goods and services to even out the trade balance between the two nations.

One thought on “India – China Trade Imbalance”

  1. India needs to change this condition and bring balance to its trade relation with china asap. Because if it is not done on priority basis, it is going to harms us in recent future.

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