Is It Possible To Boycott Chinese Goods

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Narendra Modi’s new ‘vocal for local’ campaign started when he announced it during his speech while addressing the nation about Lockdown 4.0.
The ‘vocal for local’ campaign started with an aim to make India self-reliant.
Thus, it has implicitly set up a country narrative to Boycott China services and goods.
#BoycottChina, #BoycottChineseProducts, #BoycottChineseApps hashtags are trending in India. 01-06-2020

BUT IS IT FEASIBLE TO BOYCOTT ALL CHINESE GOODS AND SERVICES?

India is one of the largest importer of Chinese goods and services.
India’s trade deficit with China is among the largest among two major trading partners.
India imports from China nearly seven times more than it exports to that region.

The number of items we import from China is huge:
Consumer durables such as electrical devices, mobile phones, plastic objects, cars, solar cells,
Important medicinal drugs, including tuberculosis and leprosy medications, antibiotics, and many others.Q
Chinese smartphone brands currently power over $8 billion of India’s smartphone market by 51%.
China exported well over 60% of electronic products and components in 2018-19.

In almost every product that we consume there is a little bit of China.
Ironically, China itself manufactures the laptops and smartphones we use to forward the message to boycott Chinese products.
The process of modern-day manufacturing is complex and interconnected.

Every nation can’t be segregated and its goods boycotted.
Take the smartphones: it uses China’s labour and land, will have investment and resources from the US or a European country, will have innovation from Japan or Korea, and could end up using apps made in India.
Thus even if we wanted to, Keeping China out of our daily lives is practically impossible.

Such consumer boycott movements are hardly new or unique.
It’s been tried out and has failed in the world many times before.
In the early 1930s, China itself attempted to boycott all Japanese products in protest against Japanese colonization.
In 2003, U.S. consumer forums tried to boycott French goods to protest France’s refusal to send troops to Iraq post 9/11.
Jamaicans boycotted Trinidad and Tobago goods, Ghanaians boycotted European goods and so forth.
The list continues.

The only feasible way to boycott Chinese products is to implement an import-substitution method and produce alternatives of all products.
But this is far from ideal at least in the short run.
If we wished to create alternatives of all the products that we are currently importing from China,
This will entail a substantial reallocation of our resources from efficient to inefficient
The range of products available to the consumer as a choice would immediately decrease, the quality of the products would worsen and the price levels would be higher.

Therefore the bottom line is that Indian companies need to work harder before they can compete with the Chinese.
The government also needs to step in by providing improved services and lowering the cost at which Indian companies are issued loans.
India can boycott Chinese products only when the gap between India and China is
If such a boycott is done now, Indian interests may be hurt even more.
Thus a phase wise approach must be adopted.

After the US government put sanctions on Chinese goods,
The Xi Jinping administration replied by enforcing sanctions of aown on crops imported from the US, killing the country’s soybean market.
Thus forcing President Trump into a USD 28 billion bailout for farmers.