To understand the potential damages of India’s newly unveiled economic war arsenal aimed at Chinese products, the Global Times talked to a number of industry practitioners over India’s planned tightening of imports standards. While the new rule’s dent on Chinese exports ranges from minimal to marginal, India’s reckless approach to address its trade deficit issue will deprive India’s poor of affordable choices at a time of coronavirus-induced economic crisis and delay its modernization process by years, a GT investigation found. Chinese manufacturers and exporters reached by the Global Times reacted calmly to media reports on India’s plan to cut imports by raising quality standards starting from March next year, a move seen as a part of the country’s economic offensive on China.
According to media reports, the Bureau of Indian Standards is changing the quality norms of 371 items to stop what it called sub-standard and non-essential imports beginning next March. Items reportedly include steel, electrical machinery, glass and toys. The moves on standards follow a string of hostile economic actions taken by the South Asian country, which include a recently reported plan to curb investment from China, a ban on nearly 300 Chinese-developed mobile apps and a plan to remove Chinese suppliers from its government procurement programs.
However, industry practitioners in China said India’s planned tightening of imports standards are not likely to do much harm. A manager with a decoration lights manufacturer based in Yiwu in East China’s Zhejiang Province told the Global Times that India’s policy has little impact as India is not a vital market, as less than 10 percent of their orders comes from India, compared with 50 percent from Africa and 20 percent from Europe.
“As far as we are concerned, the Indian market is rather dispensable,” said the manager, on condition of anonymity. Toy makers in China had similar reactions.
“Even if the Indian government uses this tactic to crackdown on toy makers, the impact would be really small,” a representative of the Guangdong Toy Association told the Global Times, pointing to the fact that India only contributed $800 million out of China’s $30 billion total toy exports in 2019.
“Made-in-China toys are mainly exported to the US and European countries. Toy exporters are not enthusiastic about the Indian market, where the most popular items are largely in the lower-end niche with negligible margin,” the representative said. Wang Shiye, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said if the Indian government is serious in its push for the new regulation and intends to implement it in a fair and transparent way, then a large number of Chinese exporters could after some time adapt to India’s new, higher standards.
However, if India’s so-called new standard rule serves only as an excuse for its discrimination and crackdown tactics against Chinese products, then Chinese exporters, whether they can or cannot adapt, will be affected, Wang said. “At any rate, India only accounts for 3 percent of China’s total exports, so the impact will be very small,” Wang told the Global Times on Thursday. “The most affected will be small factories producing lower-end goods focusing solely on Indian markets.”
Wang said the direct result of India’s determination to only import higher standard goods would be fewer Indian consumers having access to items they could previously afford and the Indian economy facing a higher cost in its modernization drive. After all, the development of India’s domestic industry also needs imports such as machinery and industrial middle products.
–The Daily Mail-Global Times news exchange item
