India and China have a very skewed trade relationship in terms of relative importance of one to the other. China is by far India’s largest trading partner with a total trade of $75 billion between the two countries in 2012, but India doesn’t feature very high in China’s list.
I was curious to see how big a trading partner is for China, and I wasn’t able to get to 2012 numbers, but I did find China’s trading partners for 2011, and here is how that list stands:
| Country or Region | Exports | Imports | Total Trade | Percentage to Total |
| European Union | 3560 | 2112 | 5672 | 22.14% |
| United States | 3245 | 1222 | 4467 | 17.44% |
| Hong Kong, China | 2680 | 155 | 2835 | 11.07% |
| ASEAN | 1701 | 1928 | 3629 | 14.17% |
| Japan | 1483 | 1946 | 3429 | 13.38% |
| Republic of Korea | 829 | 1627 | 2456 | 9.59% |
| India | 505 | 234 | 739 | 2.88% |
| Russia | 389 | 403 | 792 | 3.09% |
| Taiwan, China | 351 | 1249 | 1600 | 6.25% |
| Grand Total | 25619 |
Numbers in 100 Millions USD
This is how it looks like in a graph.
A lot of people have the misconception that since India and China have similar populations, the trade numbers are also the same, but this is simply not true. Like it or not, India is a lot more dependent on China for trade than China is on India. India also runs a massive trade deficit with China, and that’s the reason why India has been and needs to push China to allow import of more Indian goods and services to even out the trade balance between the two nations.
India needs to change this condition and bring balance to its trade relation with china asap. Because if it is not done on priority basis, it is going to harms us in recent future.