Boycotting Chinese goods would harm India

The ongoing standoff between the Chinese and Indian troops in China's Donglang area seems to have spilled over into bilateral exchanges. According to reports, Shobha Karandlaje, Karnataka provincial general secretary of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has voiced support for a campaign against Chinese goods sponsored by the radical right-wing group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

She also urged her party to "create awareness among the people about the problems caused by China at the border and the need to boycott Chinese goods". Boycotting Chinese imports, she believed, would teach China a lesson because "the economy of China is largely dependent on Indian markets".

In one way or another, Karandlaje was bluffing - for no good reason. Her perception of China's "economic reliance" on India is laughably wrong. China's trade surplus with India, its seventh-largest export market, reached $45 billion last year, but its exports to India accounted for just 2 percent of its total export volume. For India, China is its biggest trade partner and home to about 3.6 percent of the South Asian state's total exports.