An Analysis Of Similarity Of Exports Of India And China-based On The Import Data Of ASEAN

China has been keeping rapid economic growth for30years since its reform andopening up, so has India since the1990s, of which the rapid economic growth hasmade it the world’s second-largest economy behind China. In the new century, one ofthe biggest changes is the rise of the two largest developing countries China and India.In recent years, especially since the outbreak of the financial crisis, the two countriesas Asian neighbors enjoy frequent exchanges between their leaders and strengthenedcooperation in the areas of politics, economy and trade. Over the past decade, Chinaand India have enjoyed rapid development and the Sino-India relations havecontinuously improved.However, in addition to the bilateral trade cooperation, China and India are alsothe main exporters in Asia. Under the premise that the two countries have comparativeadvantages over the populations, markets, lands and resources, they also keep acompetitive relationship as to world goods and service market. In Asia, China andIndia signed the Free Trade Area Agreement with ASEAN in November2002andSeptember2009respectively, making ASEAN the latest benefit focus of China andIndia. Although the current Indian-ASEAN Free Trade Area (IAFTA) is far lesscomplete than the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA), the establishment andimplement of IAFTA marks the beginning of the mutually substantial cooperation andit not only marks an implementation of regionalism in Asia but also plays a criticalpart in India’s “Look East Policy”. To be sure, in ASEAN, India and China will facemore and more trade competition.In order to understand the post-financial-crisis situation of competition betweengoods exported from China and India, based on the theory of "Hub and Spokes"relating to the international and regional economic cooperation, with ASEAN freetrade area as "Hub", by empirical analysis this article demonstrates certain post-financial-crisis issues such as the similarity between the export structures of Chinaand India to ASEAN markets. It reveals that displayed comparative advantage ofChinese exports outstrips that of India; the degree of similarity of the goods exportedfrom China and India is relatively low, and the degree of the similarity of themanufactured goods is generally higher than that of the primary goods. However, thegoods exported from China and India are significant complements for each other, andthe competition between China and India is increasingly fierce during post-financial-crisis era. Therefore, in order to avoid blind competition in thethird-party market and promote the continuous growth in trade, China and India haveto develop an “Inclusive Growth” strategy and facilitate the establishment of theSino-India Free Trade Area.