India: Between Two Southern Powers

This chapter is a comparative analysis of the growth in South African exports to China and India between 2001 and 2017 and assessed why India-bound exports continue to lag behind their China-bound counterparts. Specifically, the chapter sought to test the hypothesis that South African exports to India (already growing from an already lower base when compared to exports to China) observed a combination of the following: as a proportion of themselves they grew less than exports to China on an annual basis, and secondly, that South African exports to India registered fewer years of growth than China-bound exports. Both hypotheses proved true. Firstly, in terms of growth, the data indicates that exports to China outgrew those to India for the 2001–2017 time-period by an average of 1.06% on an annual basis, and by 16.97% for the entire period. China appears to be the more significant export market for South Africa.