Nov. 9 – The Indian embassy in Beijing issued a rare open letter to a Chinese government-run magazine detailing the “constraints” in competing in the Chinese market.

“Trade imbalance between China and India is indisputable,” the embassy wrote in response to a report on “stumbling blocks” in China-India trade in the September issue of Beijing Review.

China is India’s largest trade partner and bilateral trade exceeded targets to hit nearly US$S52 billion in 2008. But this year, the financial crisis has led to a 32 percent drop in bilateral trade, or about US$19 billion in the first half of the year.

In Beijing, India has been stepping up efforts to balance its trade basket of exports to China to include high-end goods. Ambassador S. Jaishankar raised the issue in a talk to businessmen in September when he said that “nowhere else is our export so dominated by commodities and raw materials.”

“It cannot be that Indian industry is competitive everywhere in the world except in China,” he said.