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This is State of Asia, the podcast from Asia Society Switzerland. I'm Rem Koutanis.
Late last year, at our annual State of Asia conference, we hosted a conversation on the evolving economies of Japan, China and India. After decades of stagnation, things are looking up for Japan's economy. Structural shifts like labor market reforms and wage increases are finally starting to pay off. Meanwhile in China, growth has peaked and the government is yet to succeed in convincing its population it's okay to spend money. All the while, India is now the fastest growing developing economy.
and scrambling to shed its protectionist past in order to create a lot more much-needed jobs. All this and much more was talked about in three 12-minute conversations at our conference in Zurich by Garima Moan, Senior Fellow in the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States,
By Alicia Garcia Herrero, the Taipei-based chief economist for Asia Pacific at investment firm Netexas. And by Yumiko Murakami, general partner at Empower Partners Fund in Tokyo. I'm happy to bring you their conversations in this episode of State of Asia. First up, we have Karima Moan, who asks Yumiko Murakami about the latest on Japan's economy. Hi.
Good morning, everyone. And we will dive right in since we only have 15 minutes to cover the Japanese economy. Yumiko, thank you so much for joining. Let's start with the Trump in the room. With all the talk of tariffs and trade wars and allies being a burden, how is the business community in Japan reacting to this election?
Well, I must say, I think this is a common concern for everyone, not only in the Japanese community, but also everyone here. So clearly, not exactly the ideal situation for Japanese companies when it comes to tariff concern. However, I
I must say that this reality is something that a lot of Japanese companies have, to some extent, expected. And this is not something new in terms of how
trade frictions and tariff going up might prevent a lot of Japanese companies that are export-driven expanding their businesses in the United States. And quite frankly, in terms of the tensions, geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China and other countries have already prepared quite a few Japanese companies for the scenario of
where the divided international communities are the reality of this century, and therefore quite a few companies have already started to work on the supply chain, for example, build up without China, for example, and also in terms of location of their facilities, their plants that are more resilient to these geopolitical situations.
So I must say, this is not exactly the ideal situation for the Japanese business community, but I must say, at the same time, there has been some level of expectation of this type of higher tariff, higher trade friction scenario. Yeah.
- I'm staying on the topic of geopolitical trends. What we saw under Trump one was this intense competition with China and sort of pushing partners and allies to take a stand and be in one camp or the other. And this is under Biden, it has led to de-risking of supply chains, the conversation around that and US companies, for example, investing in India now, electronics, particularly semiconductors, electronics,
Looking at the idea of companies thinking of a China plus one model, how does that look in Japan? And I know, for example, companies often have different views than governments do. And there are these directives that you have to de-risk and move away from China. But is this possible at all? And which sectors in Japan do you think companies, businesses are looking to de-risk more? And how is that going?
I mean, I think this is exactly what Niamh Khan was saying. The business community has been a lot more realistic and practical than the political discussions that we hear from our political leaders.
And therefore, as you said, China plus one, for example, supply chain, this is something that quite a few companies have been preparing for. Is this trend going to be accelerating because of the fact that Trump has now won the election? Yes. But I actually don't really think that this is going to drastically change the expectations as well as business plans for many Japanese companies.
The reality is no matter how difficult it is for Japanese companies to deal with this geopolitical tension between China and the U.S.,
China remains a very, very important partner for business reasons. Not only as the market, and the Chinese market is a very important market for Japan, but also, obviously, there are quite a few very, very important Chinese companies that are critical to the Japanese, many Japanese industries.
not only as consumers, but also suppliers. So that reality is not going to change, that has not changed, and it's the hedging that quite a few companies have been sort of, you know, they have to prepare for this scenario. That will be more enhanced because of the election, but I do not really think this drastic change
sort of directional change that some people might argue or push for. I really don't think that's going to be the case, at least with the companies that I have spoken to, the companies that I'm dealing with in the Japanese economy. And quite frankly, I actually don't really think that drastic change, drastic sort of swing, is something that you would see in many other Western countries.
business communities either. At the end of the day, we need to live, we need to work with the largest trading partner, China, for at least next decade, next two decades, at least near future, that's not going to change. Interesting. And I think that's the case across the board, even in Europe, I guess, political discussions move at a very different pace on a very different sort of level.
ban business interests and often this point of de-risking supply chains, it's getting more and more problematic as we get more connected. And of course, the role that China plays is increasing. What India has been doing is it's been trying to reduce sort of Chinese investments in strategic sectors. For example, critical infrastructure, 5G, India was one of the first countries to sort of
keep Huawei out of the network. This is, I mean, Germany's still debating about it, but India did it back then with Trump won. And we do expect some of these more muscular messages to come out of the US. Is there a conversation around strategic sectors in Japan as well? Yeah, so there are definitely strategic sectors that are a lot more sensitive than, you know, the rest of the economy. For example, Japan has taken a very strong interest in securing
products. And as you probably know, 90-some percent of the real metal production is controlled by China. And that's a problem for countries like Japan. And therefore, there has been concerted efforts to make sure that there's China plus one supply chain in that particular segment of the economy. So there have been quite a few new investments made by Japanese companies into
Companies in the United States, for example, which have technologies and supply chain abilities to secure, again, China plus one supply chain for critical real metal products. So that's one example. So there are definitely several, SIM conductors is another one. There are definitely several interesting areas where Japan has taken a very strategic view or approach in terms of accelerating this industry.
you know, new supply chain to make sure that there are going to be more reliable sources of these very critical products. But again, these are very strategically selected. And again, the market of, you know, China is a market for many other products still remain
as a very important segment for the economy. Pivoting to more Japan internally, domestically, we saw in the growth graph, while China and India's growth was exploding, Japan has been
I mean, there's been a lot of stability with some bumps towards in the last recent years. I wanted to ask you what makes you optimistic about the Japanese economy, some new trends, innovations that you'd like to point out? Yes, you probably have seen how well the Japanese stock market has been doing in the last two years or so. And a lot of people ask, so is this going to be
Last thing, is it going to be one of small rallies in the U.S. up and down? And my take at this point is this time it's different because there are structural changes that can explain why things are looking much more promising than in the past.
The structural changes that are very promising would include labor market reform, wage increase that we're seeing for the very first time in the last 30 years. There are signs that companies are starting to spend more on human capital.
And therefore, the productive enhancement that we're seeing coming from the human capital enhancement, that is potentially going to change the landscape of the Japanese economy. As Ms. Kwan mentioned, we're shrinking too. Japan is disappearing. So is Korea.
You would actually see the same thing in many other countries, including China as well. But Japan is probably leading this trend. It is one of the fastest aging societies in the world. The labor market is shrinking so quickly that companies cannot find enough people to sustain their operations. This has been slowly happening.
However, it has hit the leaders, their P&L. They just can't hire people and therefore they are now cutting back operations. It is a reality that's forcing business leaders as well as political leaders to take actions.
that is one of the major reasons as to why I'm more optimistic than before. Even though it has been pointed out for a long time in terms of how the economy has to prepare for this shrinking labor market, labor force, not many companies have really shifted their practices in terms of how they hire and retain people. The seniority-based compensation, seniority-based promotion, lifetime employment system, that
that has been the majority of the Japanese economy. And that has started to change in the last, I would say, literally two, three years. And this is exactly why we think that
Japan's pickup that we're seeing in terms of how companies are starting to show profitability, RRE improvement, that is probably going to have much more lasting power than cyclical ups and downs. That's very interesting on the labor market reform. I know that Japan has been very conservative on immigration.
Is that opening up now? Like when you were talking about reforms in how companies employ people, but given a shrinking population, what does that conversation look like?
Definitely a lot more open than before. If you were to ask me that question, you know, even just three, four years ago, I would have said, sorry, not much is happening. There are a lot of lip service. There are just a lot of people say, yes, we want more non-Japanese people come to Japan. But in reality, they're having so many regulations that would just make it difficult for non-Japanese people.
professionals to come and work in Japan. There has been a lot of progress, I would say, on the regulation side, on the immigration side, for non-Japanese people to come and work in Japan, to get a working visa in Japan,
It's so much easier today than even compared to three years ago. So that's already happening. If you come to Japan, if you come to Tokyo, you will see a lot more known Japanese faces working in different segments of the economy that has not happened in the past.
So I would say that, again, Japanese companies are realizing, the Japanese government is also realizing that we really have no other options. Companies just don't have people to hire.
So I do think that is happening, and quite frankly, that is going to accelerate even more going forward. Because we have the opposite problem in India, that we have so many people... Let's do that. I mean, Japan-India partnership. By the way, it's happening. We are actually having quite a few Indian engineers, for example, right? Yeah, definitely, particularly in the service sector in India.
we cannot generate jobs fast enough as we have medical professionals, engineers graduating every year. And that's really expanded, particularly lower middle class and even families living in poverty have better access to education in certain states. And definitely kids have a dream of, you know, going into these sort of service lines. Yeah, so I think that that
That could be an interesting conversation because the Japan-India partnership has grown very, very close under Prime Minister Abe and then has been continuing since then. And can I just make a brief comment on that? So one of the reasons why I think Japan is an interesting place right now is there are two tsunamis that are hitting Japan, right? One is this demographic tsunami. We are shrinking. We're like, we have no babies. And the other tsunami that's hitting Japan is this automation technology crisis.
No, digitization. That's hitting every other country, but also it's hitting Japan. What does it mean? We just don't need a lot of people. We just don't need as many people as before to do the same job. Japan is in a really good place because we have less people and we need less people because of digitization. So I do think that's another reason why structurally Japan actually positioned in a really good sweet spot right now.
Next, here is Yumiko in conversation with Alicia Castillo Herrero about China's economy. What is happening in the Chinese economy on a domestic market? You know, it's very concerning in terms of what we have seen in the last decade.
two years or so, in terms of how quickly China has become from the country where people are expecting China is going to take over the US by 2035. They're going to be the greatest economy in the world to the point where, oh my God, the slowdown that the Chinese economy is experiencing on the domestic side
might actually put China in a completely different path. So I wanted to ask you just to give us a sense in terms of what is happening on the domestic side of things in China. And then we talk about the, obviously, Trump elections outcome that might affect. Okay, so first of all, thanks for that interesting question. I hope you can hear me well.
The actual latest date that was announced by Xi Jinping himself in 2019 was 2027. So, you know, we're literally two years away from China supposedly surpassing the U.S. We've not heard since because, of course, Xi Jinping knows that that date is a story of the past. And the reason is not only China having peaked, which is
Many, you know, there's been a lot of research and has China peaked? Hasn't China peaked? Well, I guess to me China has peaked, but that's not the main reason. The main reason is deflation. And Japan knows a lot about that. Japan knows how quickly your GDP shrinks when your economy deflates. And when you look at China's CPI, Consumer Price Index, you may not notice because it's a little bit like hovering around 0.3%.
But the GDP deflator, which is what matters for the size of an economy, is highly negative, let alone export prices. That's a different story. Competition versus Japan or Germany or others, or Switzerland for that matter. So, you know, I think we need to realize that for China to surpass the U.S., if that was the idea, it's going to be very difficult.
And actually with Trump, even more. Not that that's good for the U.S. economy overall, eventually, but I think the economy is going to be inflated. So the divergence between U.S. and China as a market is going to continue. And that is already in the data. So you did mention, and I fully agree, that China is important for Japanese markets. But let's face it, the U.S. is the largest export market for Japan in 2024.
So is it for Korea. So is it for ASEAN. So is it for where I live, Taiwan. If you had asked the Taiwanese years ago, would the U.S. be a largest export market than China, they would have laughed at you. But that is the reality today. So it does matter. That lack of convergence does matter because the fact that the Chinese market is shrinking for the others, even more than GDP, by the way. We had import data yesterday. It was like mind-boggling.
China's import growth was negative, minus 2.5. Exports, positive, plus 12.5. I hope Trump is not reading the news. He's probably seeing something else because, you know, that is problematic for China because the market is shrinking even more. So to your question, I think China has peaked, but my worry is not so much that, is that this impression that, and I quite agree it will be the center of Asia, but which Asia?
That's my question. Which Asia? There's many Asians out there. What I do think is that it won't be overwhelmingly China because the economy is not going to make it possible. Well, you know, you mentioned this deflationary environment that China is now facing. And of course, everyone is thinking, is China
Is China going to be like Japan? We, Japan, as a Japanese person, when I think about China, it kind of reminds me of how Japan came out of nothing after the war and became one of the greatest economic powerhouses. And that's what we are seeing with China, but we all know what has happened with Japan. So the question is, do you see China following the Japan path?
Great question. So in some aspects, I think it could be worse, and let me tell you which ones. But in others, China has tools that Japan never had, and that's because of the Second World War, the starting point. So on the negative, I've made some calculations, so China will grow similarly to Japan by 2035. And that means around 1% growth. And why? Because...
A number of reasons. Labor productivity is coming down. Total factor productivity is coming down. The return on assets is very low because there's overinvestment, overcapacity. But most importantly, because so far, and this is interesting, aging is not hitting China as it's hitting Japan or South Korea. But it will. It will. Only when they finish urbanization. So when everybody's in the cities, like in Japan, like in South Korea. As of now...
actually, the labor force is still increasing in the cities, which means that that deceleration we see is not yet related to aging. It will be, though. So by the time it is related to aging, China will see growth coming down much more rapidly than it is today. And that is around 2035 because of the path of urbanization in China. So there you go. China's economy growing at 1%. Why do I say worse than Japan?
Because Japan has much better income distribution than China. So I estimated China's GDP per capita to be around $25,000 per capita. You saw the graph. Certainly not Japan yet.
but with a much worse income distribution. So there will be issues when you grow 1% with that income distribution and that growth rate, you know? That's not something that... And by the way, you have a welfare state that China doesn't have on top of everything. So, you know, that makes things harder. Public debt will be similar, around 200% of GDP. China today is 100% of GDP. It's higher than Japan today.
when Japan was $13,000 per capita. So China's public debt accumulation is faster than Japan, just to give us, for different reasons. Subsidies, military expenditure, not welfare state. On the positive, I think everybody can understand. China is indeed a global power. Look at the BRICS. Look at challenging the dollar. Look at
you know, the BRI, Japan didn't have the ability in a way to become a hard power. China is becoming a hard power. So that's the positive for China, maybe not for the rest of the world, but for China, because it can kind of bring others along. And of course, if China dominates the global south,
What happens to the Chinese economy is only one part of the puzzle, because it could push others in the same direction. And that would make the US economic hegemony not enough, basically, to withstand that kind of much bigger pressure than China itself. So two questions.
What would you say Mr. Xi Jinping could have done to prevent this current situation? And two, he has announced putting in a large stimulus package, which seems to be working to some extent. Whether you think this is effective enough, is this enough, or are there other policies you would recommend to him? I don't think I'll ever be asked to offer that recommendation, but there you go. I can't say Xi Jinping anywhere, but
This is what I would say. Where is your consumption? It's not too difficult. I mean, you have an economy of $13,000 per capita. India, barely $3,000. India's consumption to GDP, we love it. It's 70%. I wish you would open even more, open up to imports. But the point is, you can see, it's like the growth, it's a combination of the growth and your consumption ability is
I mean, China has been growing fast without any consumption ability. Now it's no longer growing as fast without consumption ability. That's the problem. And many people ask, why? I think there's two reasons. One is China is running a 12% fiscal deficit, not even Japan. So, you know, their room isn't there anymore.
For them to make that room, they need to cut on subsidies. We wouldn't mind, we're Europeans, but it's not the way it seems it's going. And on military expenditure, you name it. On SOEs, they could privatize a state on enterprises. Nothing of this is going to happen. So there's no room. The second and most important is ideological. Do you want to run socialist country with Chinese characteristics, if I recall correctly, with people...
receiving money automatically, you know, automatic stabilizers like we Europeans, would you run it that way? No way. So that's the answer. It's just not encompassing with the political model because it takes the power away from the companies, from the banks, to the people. So that's why it isn't happening. To the stimulus, and I finish very quickly, I really want to talk about this very briefly. We all think there is a stimulus coming.
Today is the NPC readout, meaning this National People's Congress will end a weeks-long meeting. I think they've all been talking about Trump and not necessarily the stimulus, but never mind. They're supposedly going to announce a big stimulus. I, frankly, I'm not expecting any of that in the sense that what we know, what has been, you know, leaked to the media so that they're not too, probably too worried or too, you know, too...
to negative and what is coming is really a debt swap. It's just to put up to the surface hidden debt onto local government debt. To make a long story short, what an economist would tell you is this is not new money. This is recognition of losses. It's very different. You'll never grow out of recognizing losses because they have already been spent.
So what we need here is a big stimulus, a consumption-based stimulus, which I don't think they're going to announce because now what they are probably scrambling to do is to deal with U.S. tariffs. So there is no time or ability to run the economy with a big stimulus. So I think that will be very negative today when we get to a closure in Asia. So that leads to the final and probably most important
important question today. Yeah. So the tariff, the US election outcome, what do you think China is going to do? At the beginning, it will sound like dramatic tariffs and tariffs and tariffs. But if you really follow in detail what happened with the first trade war
It is like fireworks and then carving out tariffs. Oh, I exclude this. I exclude that. I exclude that because it's a negotiation. That was the phase one deal in December 2019. Trump is already negotiating with China by, you know, by screaming tariffs. This is what it is. So this is really bad for Europe. I'm sorry to say, maybe even for Japan, because when they get to the phase two deal, we're out.
We are out of the deal. In fact, we were even saying this is why the European Commission ran to finalize the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, which was never ratified, by the way, because it was a response to the phase one deal. Now, what will be our response to the phase two deal? That I leave it up to others to respond. But I think there will be a deal. It won't happen immediately, but it will happen. And finally, Alicia talks with Karina Mohan about India's economic trajectory.
Garima, it's really great to talk to you. We've been talking about India. I think there's two things I think that we've discussed. One was, of course, Scholl's visit to Delhi. I was in that delegation and I'm going to ask you a question on that, on manufacturing in India and the role of Europe. But I really love Modi's sentence. I don't know who wrote that for him, this sentence.
your position, Germany, my dynamism. So, you know, it really shows what we're going to talk about here. India is probably today the most complementary economy to Europe in the whole of Asia, as China was once upon a time. But China now is a competitor. Nothing wrong with that, but that's what it is. And India is complementary because you have that population which needs jobs.
Because you have a current account deficit, not surplus like China, meaning you need the financing. You need the manufacturing, the foreign investment from those who actually have the companies to invest in India. So in that regard, I think that sentence, your position is...
And my dynamism says a lot about that possibility. So I'd like you to tell me the manufacturing sector in India. Where do we stand? How much does India need for investment in manufacturing? Yeah. Let me start with sort of painting a broader picture for you on the Indian economy.
Ever since Modi's first term, by the way, the only political leader to survive the pandemic, be elected again. Ever since his first term, he has been sort of wooing Europe and Europe suddenly figures in India's foreign policy priorities. If you're familiar with Indian foreign policy, that never used to be the case. Europe was this sort of neglected region. It was more geared towards China, Russia, the U.S.,
And now it's been suddenly a turn towards Europe and this is exactly why India is looking for investments, trade, everything is now westwards. And one of the reasons, I mean, Modi went to the BRICS Plus summit and he came back early to visit the Sholts government and his cabinet, RIP, and also the Spanish premier who was then visiting India.
And the German government was, not only he was traveling with the entire cabinet, but also the Asia Pacific Conference of German businesses. So about 800 companies and 300 plus CEOs. And Scholz interestingly also talked about attracting
immigration from India, highly skilled workers, but also interestingly blue collar workers from India. And this is what we really need. Because in the next, by 2030, one of every five working age people would be Indian. So you really need
you know, creation of jobs and manufacturing is, India's really sort of seeing a revival of manufacturing currently for two reasons. One is the government's sort of policy of attracting businesses and second as companies try to look for a China plus one model and diversify, de-risk supply chains, India's really benefiting from that boom.
And Make in India was a scheme that started with Modi's first term, has really picked up speed now, but more importantly is PLI, Production-Led Incentive Scheme, which focuses on vital sectors like electronics, pharmaceuticals, and automobiles, which is where, of course, European companies step in quite nicely. Also dealing with the sort of industry 4.0 questions,
India is now making policies like Digital India. And for all of these sort of boxes, it's very interested in looking at European companies. Yeah.
Yeah, thanks. So basically, there's an estimate out there, if I recall, is between 13 to 14 million new jobs India needs to create every year, just to put it in context. Yeah. That's what it is. So, yeah, manufacturing, and unfortunately...
India's attraction of FDI overall has been coming down, unfortunately. And most of it is actually in ICT. It's not in pure manufacturing, where the type of skills isn't the same. So, you know, I think it's extremely important to create a middle class. So in that regard, I think that complementarity is clear. Now, we are going to move...
to the idea of highly linked jobs and demographics for India.
So what's the pitch? I think this is a good pitch for India. Even what we heard about South Korea and Japan and China to a large extent. So where do we fit India in this picture? Yeah, I mean, India has really the opposite problem. The driving engine of growth in Asia currently is India, given the demographics and how many young people are entering the job market every day. But it's also a curse in the same breath because India,
it is impossible for the government in the current economic situation to create enough jobs to give employment. Like you hear these stories of 70,000 people applying for one government job in the state of Uttar Pradesh, which is why there's a real push. I mean, the Indian system has traditionally been very protectionist. The only reason they're now talking about FTAs is because there's this existential crisis coming up of jobs.
And so another part of this is particularly we had the MD of Apple India speak to us in one of our events. And one thing that they do do is they also offer skilling to create work in sectors like electronics or semiconductor manufacturing where you need sort of a highly skilled workforce. So there are lots of those programs. In fact, German companies do that too. They provide vocational training and then a pathway to working.
So there is no sort of running away from manufacturing. We cannot be a service-based economy anymore, and manufacturing has to work. So as I was saying, one out of five Indians by 2030 is working age, so this is a real issue. Yeah, I think there is two reasons why I think these things, so your labor force and the manufacturing sector,
need to be put together. The first is because you need the jobs, no doubt about it, and create that stable income, middle class, you know, official jobs, not unofficial jobs, you name it, because the service economy tends to be, especially on the low end, you know, very like informal economy. So I think that's a big problem for taxation, for your tax base, you name it.
mobilizing savings, et cetera. So it's very important, the manufacturing sector. But I think the other issue, the elephant in the room, is the dependence on China. If you don't have a manufacturing sector, you end up having a huge, which you do, 100 plus billion deficit with China, bilateral. Yeah.
And I think, you know, you just cannot do anything about it unless you have your own manufacturing capacity. So I think the only way for India to be that China plus one, which is really to have manufacturing capacity, not only for the benefit of the companies investing there, but for India's benefit. Agreed. Absolutely. And I think one more interesting thing is defense industrial cooperation, because India
India has been dependent on Russia for so long for weapons and arms platforms that now it is just turning westwards. By the way, there was a 200% increase in platforms India purchased from France in the last decade.
So as India turns westwards, this is also a part of making India is that you work with an Indian company, do skills transfer, tech transfers. So every sort of venture you will see now will be pairing a company from the US or Europe with an Indian one because, again, they need to fast track it and also develop capacities of companies in India to sort of take these challenges. Yeah, I think just for this audience, I think it's interesting to know that there is a proposal for India
Well, first with the U.S., I said, you know, basically AI, you can describe it better. Critical and emerging technologies. Exactly. So basically exchange of emerging technologies, lots of which is dual technology. So, you know, the U.S. is opening the door to India, closing the door to China on emerging technologies, AI, et cetera. It's very clear. In a way also to put Russia further away. Yeah.
And there is the same attempt by Germany. I learned that with the delegation. So I think this is also important for Europe. Shouldn't Europe, the EU, think about these deals at the EU level? Because what is the point of having Germany signing AI, whatever, bilateral agreements as the US is doing? Yeah.
So, you know, I just wanted to launch that thing for what it's worth because I feel that we're starting to see, you know, the carving out of our own trading agreements because of, indeed,
the push for India also to go to Germany and say, I need your technology. Yeah, so if I may mention here, in the last four or five years, India has signed a lot of bilateral deals with EU member states, and they all focus on four things. One is innovation and critical and emerging technologies. Second is trade and investment. Third is
Third is migration and mobility. And fourth is security and defense. So really, it is being carved out because this is happening at the member state level. And the EU works with blunt instruments like FTAs because they're impossible to negotiate, really. And I think it's not the sort of pointed strategic instrument you need right now. Exactly. Yeah.
And I can go on and on about DG trade and bureaucratic mechanisms that make it harder, but I hope with the new commission and the commission mentioning India and the political guidelines, what we really hope for is an all-of-commission push.
for dealing with India, in a way mirroring what happened with China, which was the only time Brussels was able to inform the direction of policy. We really hope that something like this comes for India, too, because it's needed. So basically, to make a long story short, I'm sure we've been told that we're out of time. Where's the new CHI for India? Yeah. I mean, we signed something special for China. We didn't ratify it. Yeah.
Can we come up with something similar for India? Can we think of a deal for India? Yeah, I mean, what the Indians are actually asking for is even like a low-hanging fruit, sort of an early FTA, which, of course, the EU doesn't do. But for me, if I have to give a suggestion to the Commission, I would say do a sector-by-sector agreement and talk about critical sectors that you want to partner with India on and leave the FTA to be negotiated for the next 20 years. Good point. Thank you so much. Thank you.
That's all for now. We've already begun planning for this year's State of Asia Conference, taking place in Zurich on November 6th. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to be the first to get updates on that and on the many other events and activities we organize throughout the year. A link is in the show notes. We'll be back soon with new episodes, so make sure you're subscribed to this podcast to not miss anything. For now, my name is Rem Koutanis. Thanks very much for listening.