StatsGuru: What we'll talk about with Chinese President Xi Jinping

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China's president, Xi Jinping, will soon be in India. India's trade deficit with China will certainly be on the agenda. It has increased sharply since 2006, as shown in Table 1. It is now, as Table 2 shows, responsible for a quarter of India's total trade deficit. For China, however, India is a negligible fraction of its total trade. As Table 3 shows, its exports to India are 2.4 per cent of its total exports - and the proportion of its imports from India is even smaller, at well under one per cent last financial year, according to Table 4.

The nature of that trade will also be a concern. As Table 5 shows, China's manufacturing exports to India are a significant proportion of India's total imports. Meanwhile, India's exports to China are mainly primary-sector products, like agricultural goods and minerals, visible in Table 6. This is in spite of the fact that the rupee has been significantly lower versus the Chinese yuan over the past few years, as Table 7 shows. Finally, it is worth noting that Chinese investment in India, as detailed in Table 8, has significantly underperformed.