The $300 billion opportunity

How India stands to gain from the problems with China and which companies will profit from this trend

- SAURABH MUKHERJEA

With the recent elections to the Chinese Communist Party's Politburo resulting in the exit of all economic reformers from the Politburo and their replacement by military men and spies loyal to Xi Jinping (source: theguardian.com, https://bit. ly/3BNI0A7), scarcely a day passes now without a western government acting to 'contain' China. Alongside this, China's never-ending COVID-19 lockdowns - thanks to the lack of a credible COVID vaccination campaign are exacerbating the economic slowdown in the country.

Even as China experiences social, political and economic turmoil, the Indian economy seems to be in fine fettle - chart 'India and China's quarterly real GDP growth' visually demonstrates the contrasting fortunes of Asia's two biggest economies. The Government of India's tax collections are growing at 34 per cent YoY (source: hindustantimes.com, https://bit.ly/3V6MXfM), more than twice as fast as the nominal GDP growth. Credit growth in the banking system is running at 18 per cent YoY, the highest in a decade. Car and truck sales are growing at 13-26 per cent YoY (source: SIAM, 2022).

More importantly, as China unravels, the possibility grows by the passing month that large chunks of the Chinese economy will migrate to other, more stable, countries including (but not restricted to) India. As Peter Zeihan writes in his bestselling book "The End of the World is Just The Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization' (2022), "China absolutely faces deindustrialization and deurbanization on a scale that is nothing less than mythic...India, with all its endless internal variation, hopes to take a bite out of everything."

The question therefore is which segments of the Chinese economy can India aspire to yank away.

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