How to Boycott China | The Harsh Truth | AwareFeed

How to Boycott China?

 

Greetings, friends! As you know by the last Article so many of you think that "If China is resorting to such dirty means- dumping, theft, currency manipulation- then why are the rest of the countries not taking any action against China?". They are! Discussions are being held in Australia on how Australia, as a country, can reduce its dependency on China Due to these reasons.

US-China Trade War!

 Donald Trump in the USA had announced a trade war against China in 2018 And not only Trump but many politicians of the opposition- the Democratic Party- also supported the trade war So what exactly is entailed in a "trade war"? Trade war basically means that Trump said that all the Chinese goods that come into the USA, should be subjected to increased taxes and tariffs which would make these goods costlier. Both the countries raise their import tariffs to make the to and fro movement of goods more difficult And this would result in economic losses for both the countries. And so it did happen As per the calculations of the Bank of Finland, until November 2019, there was a 1% difference in China's GDP growth rate due to this trade war and a difference of 0.9% on the GDP growth rate of USA In USA. China finally promised to stop currency manipulation in January 2020 and that it would provide stronger legal protection to intellectual property, copyrights, trademarks and patents and would help in putting an end to the ongoing IP theft China also promised that the foreign companies that come to China, who are forced to transfer their technology will no longer be forced by China to do so Only after China made these promises, a Phase 1 trade deal was signed between USA and China to mutually lower their tariffs Another positive effect of this was that it forced several US companies to relocate their production facilities from China to some other countries if they wish to sell cheaper products So, a lot of US companies stopped dealing with China and shifted to other countries And overall, the US dependency on China began to shrink This can be seen in this graph In January-April 2019, as compared to January-April 2018, What were the percentage changes in the imports of US? There was a change of minus 10% in the imports coming to US from China The biggest gainers in this were- Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand and Netherlands The US companies that manufactured their products in China now shifted to these countries- Vietnam, Taiwan, Netherlands Another graph shows that Vietnam reaped the biggest benefit out of this trade war because a number of things that were manufactured in China are also supplied by Vietnam. 

Boycott Chinese wold Loss To Indian Economy!

The aim behind the discussion on this entire trade war was to show you how easy it is to boycott Chinese products if the government imposes import taxes on the goods coming from China But doing this would result in a big blow to the Indian economy The losses would be far more than what US incurred in the US trade war In my opinion, India is not prepared to do this Why is India not prepared and what it can do to be prepared Come, let us talk about this The trade between India and China is extremely imbalanced Talking about 2018-19, then goods worth 70 billion dollars were imported in India from China and the goods exported to China from India was worth merely 16.7 billion dollars This lopsided imbalance is called a trade deficit There is a deficit of nearly 53 billion dollars And this trade deficit has been increasing over the past few years That means, this is a huge advantage for China that China has made India dependent on itself The thong which India imports the most from China and for which India is the most dependent on China is electronic stuff- for example, TVs, smartphones Speaking of smartphones, 76% of our market is replete with Chinese companies Next in line are pharmaceutical products. 65-70% of our medicines come from China. These are the most important areas in my opinion which need thinking about how to replace Chinese goods.

How To Boycott?

 When we talk of "Boycotting", this does not mean that we will completely stop using all products from China We will have to look for another alternative We will have to look for alternatives to replace them Let us first talk about what can be done on an individual level as a consumer to replace the goods made by Chinese companies by the other companies Doing this is very easy in some fields. For example, if we talk about Chinese software, You can instantly delete the Chinese apps from your phones If you find an app useful, you will find a non Chinese alternative of it pretty easily There are numerous apps on the app store which are of better quality But I believe that there should be some government support to motivate the people for this It shouldn't be that we are boycotting Chinese apps on one hand, on the other hand, the Modi government is making an official Indian government account on TikTok So it is extremely essential to mount pressure on the government to atleast stop doing this Leaving aside software and talking about hardware, then this too, can be achieved within one year, as Sonam Wangchuk had pointed out It is not that difficult to do We are not saying that you should throw away the Chinese smartphone that you currently possess Don't buy a smartphone from a Chinese company, the next time you go to buy one For example, do not buy from Oppo, Vivo etc There are several other available options  - you can buy one from Samsung, which is a South Korean company HTC is from Taiwan, Nokia is a company from Finland, Asus is another company from Taiwan Apple is a company from the USA Micromax and LAVA are Indian companies You can buy your next smartphone from any of these companies Buy new TVs or electronics for home use from these companies.

 Many out of you would also point out that several of these products use parts that are made in China. What should be done in such a scenario? 

These things can be basically divided into four levels, in my opinion The first level is - Products made by Chinese companies The second level is- Made in China products that are manufactured by some other company. For example, the iPhone. It is made by Apple, which is a US company. But it is made in China The third level includes products that use Chinese parts And at the fourth level are companies that have a Chinese investment in them In my opinion, we need to stay alert at only the first level out of all these four levels We need to boycott products manufactured by Chinese companies Made in China products are not that big a deal, in my opinion Because, today, Apple manufactures its iPhones in China because the manufacturing costs are the lowest there But say, Trump kept the import taxes high on the iPhones that are made in China, or that Apple noticed that Chinese labour is increasingly becoming expensive, and that they would get cheaper labour in some other country, then Apple can shift its production companies with comparative ease And the iPhones that were "made in China" until yesterday will now become "made in Vietnam" or "made in India" So this isn't that big of a problem As long as the companies- be it foreign, Indian or non Chinese- manufacture products in China then I don't think that you should boycott them You can continue using such products There are so many Indian startups which have some percentage of their ownership in the hands of China Chinese companies have invested their money in them Our popular companies- Zomato, Swiggy, Ola, Paytm, Ola, BYJU's Some percentage of all these companies are owned by Chinese companies Their case is extremely interesting On one hand, you could argue that these companies were started in India They provide both jobs and benefit to Indians and hence we should not boycott them On the other hand, you could also argue that Chinese companies own some portion of these companies So, some percentage of all the profit that these companies make would go to the Chinese companies and help them make profits And as you are aware, Chinese companies dance to the tunes of the Chinese Communist party They would give up their entire data if the latter demanded so I feel that both the arguments here hold weightage. We should evaluate what percentage of a company is owned by a Chinese Company If that figure is small- around 10-20%, then it wouldn't make that big of a difference but if that figure touches 40-60%, as in the case of Paytm, then we should not use these companies Because using them would be tantamount to transferring majority of the amount to China and Chinese companies are minting profit off of them And if the ownership is more than 50%, then the decision making also gets transferred into Chinese hands But what about made in India products manufactured by Chinese companies? I'd say that we should avoid them in this case as well because Chinese companies are our main target here And finally, there are some people that say that we should boycott Chinese food as well! And this is utter rubbish! You shouldn't do this at all.

Who is making the Chinese food? 

The Chinese restaurants in India, where Indian cooks are employed The restaurant has been set up by some Indian who is serving other Indians So how does it matter to the Chinese? The food is not being imported from China! In fact, you'd be surprised to know that several Chinese dishes that are served in India today in the name of "Chinese food", have actually originated in India You would not get such food if you ever go to China the food that you get in India in the name of "Chinese food" For example, a lot of people think that momos have come from China but they actually originated in North-east India So, there's no benefit in boycotting things like these By doing this, we would be going against the people of our own country and harming our own country Doing all this would only increase racism against the North eastern people.