China wants to combine 'Make in India' with 'Made in China' to reduce trade deficit

BEIJING: China said it is making "every effort" to address India's concerns on $47 billion trade deficit as it called for combining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Make in India' initiative with its 'Made in China' to step up investments.

"We are making every effort to fundamentally solve the issue. We need to find a new channel, new methodology to break the bottle neck," said Huang Xilian, Deputy Director General of the Asian Affairs department of the Foreign Ministry.

China is trying to address the issue by promoting mutual investments to balance the trade. "We have agreed two industrial parks and encouraging more Chinese investments in India to promote exports to China," he said.

"We are ready to buy. This is next five years we are experted to import commodities from $10 trillion. We hope we could import as much as possible from India," he said.

"We should try to combine 'Make in India' and 'Made in China' strategy together. The key word in India-China relationship is development, which is a major factor of our cooperation," he said.

India's trade deficit with China averaged around $47 billion in last year's trade of over $70 billion.

Huang said China has sent delegation to India to discuss measures to increase imports.

China is importing films from India, he said, referring to recent success of PK which grossed over $16 million.

China is also stepping up imports of Indian pharmaceuticals, Huang said.