China’s state-run Global Times has said that India has the potential to become a global economic powerhouse. An article published on the website of Global Times, however, added that India would need China’s help and investment to actually become an economic powerhouse.


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The report pointed that India’s GDP grew 8.2 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter while China’s economy grew 6.7 per cent. It, however, quoted an expert, Long Xingchun, as saying that it was too early to say that India was outdoing China, or even at par with it in terms of attracting foreign investments.


The analyst was further quoted as saying that the gap was evident because of the fact that China was an innovation-driven economy which seeks foreign investment with the motive of getting technological upgrades.


According to Long, India is just interested in getting foreign investment of any nature. He said that India had an “inefficient environment, out-of-date infrastructure” and not so equipped manufacturing industry.


The report in Global Times conceded that reforms brought by Prime Minister Narendra Modi reflected the boom in foreign investment in India. However, another analyst, Lou Chunchao of China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said that India could not sustain the same if it doesn’t seek held from China.


According to the article in the Chinese state-run media publication, “China can reshape India’s infrastructure landscape”.


Recently, an article in Global Times had hit out at India for raising import duties on 19 non-essential items. The report had said that it could be a setback and in the long run hurt Indian customers.


India's recent decision to impose higher tariffs on import of non-essential items “could mainly hit Chinese and South Korean companies," Bai Ming, deputy director of the Ministry of Commerce's International Market Research Institute, had told Chinese state-run Global Times.