China today pointed to its rising investment in India as an indicator of improving ties, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was set to begin a two-day visit to Wuhan for Friday’s summit with President Xi Jinping.
By the end of 2017, Chinese investments into India “added up to more than $8 billion”, said Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Gao Feng on Thursday.
“India has become an important market for infrastructure cooperation among Chinese companies and a major investment destination,” he said. “As two large developing countries and major emerging market economies, China and India both have a huge domestic market. The economies of both countries are highly complementary to each other, creating enormous potential for cooperation.”
Gao also said trade had grown 15.4 per cent in the first quarter of the year, touching $22.1 billion. That, however, is only half the picture as the trade deficit remains substantial. India’s exports accounted for only $4.6 billion.
In 2017, India imported $68 billion worth of goods from China, a 16.5 per cent year-on-year rise. Two-way trade is up from $70 billion in 2014 to $84.4 billion growing 20 per cent last year, but the rise in trade has been entirely led by India’s hunger for imports from China.
Correcting the trade imbalance and boosting Indian exports of IT and pharma is on the agenda when Modi meets Xi in Wuhan. The talks are without a set agenda and are to be wide-ranging covering bilateral and global issues, officials said.
“What we want is to come up with an overarching long-term vision for the next 100 years to deepen bilateral cooperation and properly handle differences to bring both countries to a new starting point,” said Vice Foreign Minister Kong Xuanyou.
India Today
