ABSTRACT
The China–India bilateral economic relationship, up to now, would probably be considered small in terms of the monetised value of exchanges it signifies, as compared to several other similar relationships elsewhere in the world. But it would be erroneous to judge the capacity of the relationship purely in terms of what trade statistics indicate. Bilateral trade is expected to exceed US$100 billion in the near future. That would make the trade equivalent to the economic sizes of Iraq and Morocco and not too far behind those of Vietnam and Bangladesh. Nonetheless, as a proportion of world trade, China–India trade would still remain small compared with trade between the US, the EU and China. But the economic relationship between the world's second and eleventh largest economies, which are also among Asia's largest and the most populous countries of the world, is not only confined to statistical details of cross–border flows of goods, services and capital. There are several qualitative aspects of the relationship in terms of how the two economies visualise their configurations in the region and the world, how they respond to challenges, many of which are common, and how in the process of such visualisation and responses they interact with each other. Both countries, undoubtedly, have their own spaces to grow and expand; but their sizes and high growth trajectories in a world that is becoming increasingly dominated by the actions and ambitions of the two economies, create numerous occasions where economic interests clash or converge. An analysis of the bilateral relationship can hardly forego these occasions where the two will compete or collaborate.
