The author expresses his views on the Comparative Analysis of the strengths of China and India

Fastest emerging leaders of the world, fastest growth and development. Massive sourcing hubs for all kind of industries. Especially for apparels/garments, their rivalry is famous across the globe. Both of them have abundance of resources, capital, skilled human resources, technology and globalization. Both them have stabilized government and economy. Both them have strong demand, infrastructure, affordability, state of the art technology and attitude.

Textiles and apparels are one of their main industries.

In spite of lot of similarities, both of them have lots of hidden skills and resources which are the backbone of their competitiveness. Let's talk about their competitiveness.

• India is famous for their quality driven approach, but china has quantity driven approach.

• India has high costing compare to low costing by China,

• Lot of specialized fabrics, India required outsourcing from China/ Hong Kong/ Bangladesh to fulfill their customer's requirements. But China has specialty in all and each kind of fabrics due their vast technology and diversified approach.

• In India export business is concentrated in Delhi, Tirupur, Bangalore, Gujarat, Ludhiana and Chennai, due to their connectivity to transportation system. But in China, due to Hong Kong which makes the China more competitive, approximately 60% of business across the globe runs from Hong Kong. All kind of buying meetings and buyers-sellers fairs usually are organized there.

• India is more specialized for high-end apparels which pertains lots of handwork, smocking, embroidery, fabric printing, placement printing, chiffon and georgette fabrics, but China is more specialize for casual and simple garments which little or no embellishments.

• India has diversified factories in the sense; they are capable of handling small lots to bulk lots at the same time. But China is more towards bulk lots due to their big factories and specialized labor for operations.

• India is much capable to handle all kind of countries and their communications due to their skillful English speaking workforce. China lacks behind in communication, so their business houses and head offices are more concentrated in Hong Kong due to availability of English speaking work force.

• Indian counterparts are much flexible in considering and accepting changes, alteration, last minute modifications with minimum or no up-charge; but Chinese counterparts are rigid or less flexible in accepting last minute changes. Any change accepted considering their extensions in deliveries and up-charges.

• India exports' costing is much higher due to their high investment in design inputs and research. But Chinese exports' costing is much less due to cheap labor and big lot size of order in spite there invest for designs and research departments are grossly high.

• India has higher labor costs due to minimum wage rate set by the Central and State Govt. Also the prices of raw material are shooting high day-by-day. Yarn rates, printing and weaving rates, accessories rate are going high, due to importing accessories and high overheads. China is not behind form this high cost problem, but due to production of bulk lots, they achieve economies of scale, they are not dependent on imports of accessories like India. So there costs are comparatively low.

• India has only one or two state of the art fashion and garment colleges which can compete with international apparel trade. Like NIFT is the premier institute for their fashion, design, technology and management inputs. But China has lots of Big and internationally recognized Universities to enhance and prepare the apparel professionals to compete the complex water of global apparel and fashion business. Like HK Poly which offer globally recognized and affiliated programs in fashion, where students get chances to learn all aspects of garment skills. It helps to understand the growing professionals to expose with fashion and apparel industries of other countries as well.