China India Photo:CFP

China's foreign trade with India in the first quarter of 2022 totaled $31.96 billion, an increase of 15.3 percent compared with the same period last year, customs data showed on Wednesday, reflecting the two economies are highly complementary, experts say.

"The continuous rise in bilateral trade showed the complementarity of two major developing economics despite tension from global geopolitical changes, and India is unable to reduce its dependence on China in a short term," Liu Zongyi, secretary-general of the Research Center for China-South Asia Cooperation at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

According to statistics released by the General Administration of Customs (GAC), from between January to March, China's exports to India reached $27.1 billion, over five times what it imports from India, which only totaled $4.87 billion.

Liu said that in addition to electronic devices like mobile phones, about 70 percent of chemical and other manufactured goods used by the Indian pharmaceutical industry are imported from China.

Compared with the increase of 28.3 percent year-on-year of India's imports from China in the first three months, its exports to China declined 26.1 percent year-on-year.

Liu noted that it is because that in the first quarter of 2021, China imported large quantities of iron ore from India, which accounts for a large share of India's exports to China; but from the second quarter of last year, the nation has reduced imports from New Delhi.

In 2021, China-India trade hit record high of $126 billion, up 43.3 percent compared with 2020 levels, the GAC said.

Overall China-India trade still has potential to grow, Liu said. However, India will continue to promote its Made-in-India policy and try to find substitutes to replace imports from China.

Global Times