Post Doklam thaw: China Trade Minister may come in Dec

With the Doklam crisis blowing over for the moment, India and China are likely to hold the long-pending meeting of the joint economic group (JEG) headed by the Commerce Ministers later this year which, among other issues, will focus on New Delhi's concern over the widening trade deficit.

“Chinese Trade Minister Zhong Shan is expected to travel to India for the JEG meeting in December as bilateral relations have almost normalised after the meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the Chinese Premier in Shanghai. The embassies will now work to finalise the date,” a government official told BusinessLine.

The JEG has not met since 2015 and despite three dates proposed by India over the past year, China had not responded.

However, the Chinese Minister indicated his willingness to visit India in December for the JEG when he met the then Commerce & Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Philippines early last month. “Though the Chinese Minister had indicated that he could possibly visit India in December, the escalation of tension in Doklam had put a big question mark on it. But now that troops have been withdrawn and peace has been restored the visit seems a distinct possibility,” the official said.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry is expected to get in touch with the Indian Embassy in Beijing to finalise the dates.

India’s new Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu, who replaced Sitharaman early this week, will get an opportunity to interact with his Chinese counterpart Zhong Shan in Manila this weekend at the Trade Minister’s meeting of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

“We don’t know if Zhong Shan will reiterate his intention to travel to Delhi this year for the JEG when he meets Prabhu, but we are certain that China’s Commerce Ministry will pursue the matter soon,” the official said.

New Delhi wants Beijing to address its chief concern of rising trade deficit with India (annually at over $50 billion) at the earliest. It has been pushing its neighbour to remove restrictions on trade in buffalo meat, pharmaceuticals and IT, but there has been no progress so far.

China, on its part, would want to take up the issue of the increasing number of anti-dumping investigations and duties imposed on Chinese products by India.

New Delhi has been claiming that it has been strictly following the processes laid down by the World Trade Organisation while imposing anti-dumping duties and the penal levies are imposed because Chinese products are being indeed dumped in India.

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