The explosive growth in India’s mobile telephony during the last decade coincided with a robust growth in its trade with China. A variety of imported equipment from China played critical roles in augmenting use of mobile phones and expansion of networks in India. This paper studies the trends of these imports and examines the reasons for their penetrating deep into the Indian market. It argues that Chinese imports bridged a serious supply-side deficiency in India’s telecom sector: absence of a modern indigenous equipment manufacturing industry. Pointing out that development of the latter has been stunted due to low R&D, limited innovations, lack of access to finance, and liberal access to imports, the paper argues that Chinese imports are likely to continue till these conditions prevail notwithstanding security concerns over such imports.
大象後院裡的巨龍：印度手機革命中的中國進口產品
在過去十年裏印度的移動電話呈爆炸性增長，與此同時印度與中國的貿易量也急劇增加。從中國進口的各種設備在印度移動電話使用的增長和移動網絡的擴張中起到了關鍵性的作用。本文研究這些進口產品的趨勢並攷察它們得以深入印度市場的原因。本文認為，中國進口產品彌補了印度電信業中由於現代本土設備製造工業的缺席而造成的嚴重的供應缺口。本文指出，現代本土設備製造工業發展的滯後是由於研發水平低下、創新有限、資金缺乏、以及對進口的開放。本文認為，雖然進口通訊產品會帶來國家安全隱患，在以上情況改善之前，印度從中國的進口還將繼續。
Translated from English by Xin Huang
Amitendu Palit