Protester in India burning Chinese goods File Photo: PTI
Fri 23 August 2019:
Days after China backed Pakistan and prodded the United Nations Security Council into an informal discussion on New Delhi’s decision to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomy, anger is brewing in India against the Asian dragon.
A campaign is slowly gaining traction that calls for an economic boycott and heavy tariffs against Chinese goods, even as India struggles with a flailing economy and an unprecedented jobs crisis.
The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu nationalist ideological fountainhead of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has launched a campaign across the country asking Indians to shun Chinese products.
The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), a nationwide group with over 70 million affiliated businesspeople, has joined in. The group wants Prime Minister Narendra Modi to raise import duties to 500 per cent. All this has been backed by a vicious social media campaign.
The sentiment is that China, the economic Goliath, must be punished, and the answer is to hit Beijing where it hurts.
But with the Modi government adopting an increasingly aggressive, nationalist agenda, many Indians, including some of the prime minister’s core supporters, believe the time is right for an economic shot at China.
“These calls for a boycott are mostly political rhetoric and don’t make sense, especially when we are in such a delicate economic situation,” said Viren Shah, a garment trader and the head of Mumbai’s Federation of Retail Traders Welfare Association.
The group has more than 200,000 member retailers. It said dependence on Chinese goods made a boycott unfeasible.
“In retail, for instance, over 80 per cent of our sales are Chinese goods, and people prefer them because they are cheaper and, often, attractive, even if they are not great quality,” Shah said.
Foreign policy analysts were similarly unenthused. Karan Pradhan, deputy editor at FirstPost, an Indian news website, called the move a knee-jerk reaction not grounded in reality.
“One needs to look at the import numbers from China to understand that such a threat isn’t realistic … Given how cheaply Chinese goods are imported, such a boycott would be counter-intuitive,” Pradhan said.
Calls for reprisals against China’s decision to back Pakistan were an overreaction, he added.
“China, obviously, calibrated its move well. It had to back its ally Pakistan, and hence, the informal United Nations Security Council meeting was meant to only offer a hearing to Pakistan.”
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