Cargos are unloaded from a container ship at the container terminal of the Lianyungang Port in Lianyungang City, east China's Jiangsu Province, Jan. 14, 2021.(Photo: Xinhua)

 The China-India bilateral trade is showing strong resilience as the trade volume decline between the two countries remains much lower than India's decline in global trade in 2020. Bilateral trade has been continuously increasing in the first quarter of 2021, said the spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) on Thursday. 

In 2020, the trade volume between China and India reached $87.6 billion, which demonstrates the strong resilience of the trade cooperation between the two countries, Gao Feng, the spokesperson for the MOFCOM, said on Thursday at a press conference. He added that the two major emerging economies are highly complementary and have a great potential for more cooperation.

The resilience reflects that the two countries are able to complement each other in certain industries such as raw materials for light industrial products, automobile parts, and medicine production, Dai Yonghong, a professor of the Institute of South Asia Studies at Sichuan University, told the Global Times on Thursday. 

China remained India's largest importer despite bilateral conflicts in 2020, according to Dai, noting that India cannot decouple China as a trade partner. Official data showed that India imported $58.7 billion worth of goods from China in 2020.

The bilateral trade in goods between China and India in the first quarter of 2021 has achieved a leap, with the total trade volume reaching $27.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 42.8 percent, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs of China earlier this month. 

The first batch of oxygen generators made in China has arrived in India and China will continue to provide support to the Indian people, Gao said at the briefing.  

China might help certain industries in India to recover after the pandemic such as electronic products, automobile parts for car production, medical supplies and chemical products, Dai added.