China’s Belt and Road Initiative a big boost to its trade, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences

The Dollar Business Bureau

Countries that are involved in China’s Belt and Road Initiative have played an important role in China’s trade in the past two decades a recent report published by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences said.

China is now the second largest trading partner to 25 countries and second or the third largest partner for 19 of them. Though India is yet to officially recognise this initiative by Beijing, the report publishes that last year trade between China and five Asian countries Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and India exceeded $70 billion. 27% of China’s foreign trade came from countries that are involved in the Belt and Road Initiative. From 1995 to 2016 the total value of imports and exports between China and countries in the Belt and Road Initiative grew from $38.43 bn to $ 978.28 billion.

The report also stated that last year China reached a trade surplus with 52 countries, while with India it reached $47 billion. The trade surplus with India mainly came from the exports of medium to high-tech products as India is now importing most of these products to promote industrialization. The report also says that China’s huge dependence on Malaysia’s electronic information products that are exported after assembling and processing them, took its trade deficit to $10.9 bn. There were 12 other countries with whom China had a trade deficit.