| Biswo |
Posted
on 30-Dec-00 12:49 AM
The following article is written by an Indian journalist in
www.dhan.com (website listed at the end). This can be a great
reply to those Indians who are complaining that Nepal is flooding
Indian with Chinese stuffs.
Please read and enjoy!
<>
"The Chinese are coming. The Chinese are coming" scream
headlines in papers from Ahmedabad to Vijayawada. You
dismiss them thinking they are about the usual incursions in
Arunachal and Kashmir. They are about incursions all right,
but not the usual kind! They are about capturing our markets
and dumping goods at giveaway prices!
Why are we so rattled by reports of Chinese 'invasion' while
westerners have been here a long time and have not only
captured our markets but also destroyed our industries?
They have been doing this now for the last few years and our
government has actually encouraged them! Indian
businessmen have been collaborating with them and many
flaunt their association with western companies as a badge
of distinction. But when it comes to China, the government
suddenly behaves in a hostile manner, as if what the Chinese
are doing is something awful.
The Chinese themselves are very cool about the whole thing.
Their ambassador here says that China is exporting to India
in the same way as it does all over the world. There is
nothing secretive about it. And it is all above-board. China
exports openly to Nepal, from which goods are smuggled into
India by Indians, not by the Chinese. It is for the Indian
government to put a stop to it, for as far as the Chinese are
concerned, there is nothing illegal or improper about it, he
says.
The fact is that we simply do not know enough about China.
We have still not woken up to the fact that China is an
industrial power in her own right and a much bigger power
than India. Its goods are excellent in quality, and there is such
a large variety that exports come naturally to them. Their
economy is twice our size and growing at twice our rate. It is
also in much better health. Fiscal deficit is down to 2% of
GDP against 5 to 6 per cent in India. Interest rates in China
are half as compared to ours and so are industrial wages.
Technologically, China is far more advanced than India, with
more research scientists, more computer experts and twice
as many software engineers.
China is one of the few countries that exports more than they
Import and actually has a surplus on the external account.
No wonder foreign investors' are pleased with China and are
pouring funds at the rate of 40 to 5O billion dollars a year,
while we wonder why we don't get even two billion. China's
foreign, exchange reserves now exceed $150 billion - four
times India's reserves. And the Chinese currency is so
strong it has not been devalued for five years.
We should try and find out why China has been able to do all
this, while we haven't. First, they concentrated on food,
which they now have in plenty. The country produces 500
million tonnes of foodgrains against only 200 million tonnes in
India. Very few Chinese starve and the poverty rate is below
10 per cent. These are figures from World Bank reports, but
they may not be authentic. But those who have visited China
recently say that although there is some unemployment,
especially in villages, food is plentiful and prices are cheap.
It is not an accident that China is becoming a big exporter and
the things we see in India are only portends of what lies in
future. China is the biggest exporter is Asia and the fifth or
sixth in the world. It is natural for China to export to India,
just as it is natural for us to export to Nepal.
The main thing, of course is prices. The Chinese have always been famous for their low prices. Before the war, Chinese hawkers going
from door to door in Indian cities and often in villages were a
familiar sight. At that time they sold silks and cotton ready-mades. Now they sell battery cells, clocks, watches, ceiling
fans with built-in power converters and bicycles. This is what
modern nations do and China is today as modern a country as India.
Mark my words. Today it is dry cell batteries; tomorrow, it will
be motorcars and computers. Today it is locks and watches, tomorrow it will be gas turbines and steel furnaces. And China
will sell them here at half our prices. In ten years' time, China
will have an economy as big as Japan today. In twenty years, it
will be the size of America.
We should sit down and find out why we cannot do what China is
doing. Why their quality is so good and prices so low. They are
much more innovative than we are and always offer something new.
Have we in the last ten years offered anything that is really new?
I do not like foreigners swamping our markets with their goods,
but the world is going to be more and more open, whether we like
it or not, and it is time we pulled up our socks and get cracking.
It is no use asking the government to slap heavy import duties
because there are limits to what the government can do in this new
environment ruled by organisations like WTO. And remember China is
doing all this though she is not a member of WTO. Unless we get
down to business, the world will walk all over us, as the Chinese
are now doing.
taken from:
http://www.dhan.com/news/y2k1226-jay.html
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