Why Chinese tourists matter

India has the capacity to entertain many more tourists from across our northern borders

India’s large and growing trade deficit with China has agitated our policymakers over the past decade. All efforts to bridge the trade gap or even reduce it have so far come to naught. Our efforts to export more basmati and non-basmati rice, sugar, cotton, mangoes, grapes, pomegranate and sapota have not dented the ballooning deficit. Our attempts to sell software and pharmaceuticals to the Middle Kingdom have run into elaborate Chinese non-tariff barriers. Our deficit with China constitutes the bulk of our global trade deficit. 

India’s expanding trade deficit is dictated by the composition of our trade with China. When we