China on Friday said it stands ready to work with India to fully leverage the role of bilateral economic and trade cooperation as a “ballast” while the Indian side is also looking at making the bilateral trade more balanced.
In a social media post regarding the meeting between Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and China’s Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao during the just concluded 14th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy talked of using trade cooperation for jointly exerting influence on the world.
Regarding the meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Goyal said discussions were held on ways to expand trade and move towards balancing it. “We have discussed ways to expand trade, move towards more balanced trade and generate trust to help smooth bilateral trade between China and India and give greater opportunity for our exporters to export pharmaceuticals, engineering products, fish and farm products,” he said on Thursday.
Already in April-February 2026 China has left the US far behind to become the biggest trading partner of India. During this period trade with China stood at $ 137.0 billion as against $ 127.8 billion with the US.
The entire growth in trade with China has been driven by imports, which touched $ 119.5 billion in the first 11 months of last fiscal. This growth has also led to the trade deficit touching $ 102.1 billion.
“This gap is projected to widen to $ 111.4 billion for 2025-26,” founder of GTRI Ajay Srivastava said. “The imbalance reflects India’s reliance on Chinese components and industrial inputs including electronics parts, electric vehicle batteries and components, solar cells and modules, machinery, organic chemicals and pharma ingredients,” he added.
Other than trade, China is also seeking greater openness for enabling investments in India. Chinese investments in India are governed by Press Note 3 of 2020 that mandates prior approval of the government.
The recent relaxation in Press Note 3 has been given only for investing entities where stake of the Chinese entities is 10% or less. They would not be required to seek prior government nod.
Another relaxation has been given in manufacturing of capital goods, electronic capital goods, electronic components, polysilicon and ingot-wafer where the government has assured that the application will be processed and its fate decided within 60 days.
While trade flourishes, the investments lag at just $ 2,5 billion so far.
TOPICSChinaTradeThis article was first uploaded on April three, twenty twenty-six, at twenty-seven minutes past seven in the evening.