Following the recent standoff between Indian and Chinese troops at the border, there has been a nationwide call for a ban on Chinese products altogether. While that might not be possible in its entirety, a new survey suggests just how much proportion of the Indian population is willing to give up Chinese goods.

Survey Report

A recent survey, conducted by LocalCircles, recorded 32,000 responses from citizens across 235 districts of India. For a particular question “Would you boycott buying Chinese products for next year?”, 8000 responses were noted. An overwhelming majority of them were “yes,” as 87% of the respondents were ready to stop buying Chinese goods for the next one year.

Citizens were asked if they would boycott buying/using products & services of Chinese companies including the likes of Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, One Plus, Club Factory, Aliexpress, Shein, Tik Tok, WeChat etc. effective immediately.

To this, 58% of those surveyed said ‘yes, won’t buy from now’, while 39% opted for ‘yes, won’t buy from now but have to use what I have already purchased’.

So in total, almost all the respondents – 97% – are ready to boycott major Chinese brands for their products and services. The citizens want to instead focus on Indian brands, helping the country be self-reliant under the ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ mission.

Specific Questions

The survey goes further in-depth with the questions on boycotting Chinese goods. It asked if the Chinese goods being imported to the country should be needing Indian standards certification. A majority of the people voted yes to this. While 90% of the people surveyed said that Chinese products should have BIS, CRS, CDSCO, and FSSAI certifications, only 5% discarded the need for such a certification.

In the past, India has brought in trade restrictions with countries like Pakistan post the Pulwama attack. The restrictions included a 200% import duty on goods from Pakistan. The survey asked if a similar import duty should be put on Chinese goods.

The responders were divided on this question. Since India procures a large quantity of both goods and raw materials from China, only 42% of the respondents said ‘yes’ for the 200% import duty.

36% of the responders said that the import duties should be imposed but not on raw materials. The remaining 20% said no import duty should be imposed at all.