China and India: Economic Performance, Competition and Cooperation

In the recent years China and India have experienced unprecedented growth in terms of economic development, which have attracted the world economy. From the global perspective, China and India today represent two unique new players in the international market, presenting a combination of high GDP, significant level of poverty, a lower per capita income and living standards. This raises several questions about their becoming the major drivers of international economic growth. It is only in the recent past that political initiatives of confidence building measures began to shape their areas of mutual cooperation. Now the bilateral trade among these economies has been recognized as the most reliable and the agreeable instrument of China-India rapprochement which will tend to influence the world economy and its growth pace. Their long-term potential as trade partners, however, remains to be fully explored and exploited. It is in this context of their fast changing equations, the current paper makes an attempt to hypothesize how this bilateral trade promises to become one of the most potential instruments to intensify their political relations and facilitate progress in actualizing their strategic partnership for their mutual benefit in the future.