Boycotting Chinese Products - Is It A Good Decision ?

After the border dispute with China, the central government of India is asking the population to boycott Chinese products, also encouraging the idea of self-reliant India. Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) released a list containing around 500 categories of products we import from China, which can be substituted or can be produced in India itself. The Indian government is planning to raise import duties and introducing new trade barriers to 300 Chinese products. China accounts for  11% of total imports of India, and in China, the total share of India's exports is only 3%, this data simply helps us to understand that which economy will be more affected by the China Trade Ban. 

Union Minister Ramdas Athawale is demanding to ban the sale of Chinese food in the Indian Restaurants. One fact he is skipping is that the same Indian restaurants are providing employment to Indian chefs and waiters, using vegetables grown in India itself (mostly), contributing to India's GDP growth. You might have seen people posting on social media that in 1945 the USA attacked Japan by throwing a nuclear bomb, and now Japan doesn't import anything from the USA. This news is completely wrong, the 2019 trade report says that Japan is the 4th largest trade partner of USA. Let's assume that from now you started boycotting Chinese products (thinking the nation is first), the section which will suffer most is the lower middle class and the poors, because they might be having a Chinese T.V. and a Chinese refrigerator in their house, watching their kids playing with Chinese games and toys, while sitting on a made in China furniture, and reading this article on a Chinese phone (most probably). Another section that can face a good amount of loss is the producers and exporters, because Indian exporters and suppliers have already paid the amount for the Chinese goods you are going to buy in at least the next one month (or more).

From 2015, China has invested around $4 Billion in Indian Tech Startups. Alibaba owns a stake in Snapdeal, Paytm and Zomato, and Tencent owns a stake in Hike and Ola. The telecom sector of India has already declared that any Chinese company will not be involved in their upcoming projects. Personally avoiding few companies is one thing, but increasing tariffs and import duties will affect negatively on our image globally. As per the World Trade Organization norms, one economy cannot impose higher tariffs on another economy, but they can increase tariffs on the particular good that they are trading. And by doing so, we would be losing our other imports globally also (the same situation was faced in the US-China Trade War). 

Knowing that we are currently facing an economic slowdown and fighting a health crisis globally, we need to take decisions considering what will be its impact on our economy, and our image globally.