Paper short abstract:

This paper is an examination of the grassroots diplomacy in the international business engagement among the Indian traders within a local setting in China.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is an examination of the grassroots diplomacy in the international business engagement within a local setting in China. Drawing on field research between 2010 and 2012, the paper is based on an ethnographic study conducted in Keqiao county of Zhejiang Province. Keqiao is Asia's largest fabric wholesale market, with over 30 percent of China-made fabrics traded through this small county to more than a hundred countries around the world. At this world centre of fabric trading, Keqiao, more than ten thousand Indian agents have organised a vibrant middleman economy. The local trading activities between Indians and Chinese are mostly a mix of formal and informal economies, often inevitably in conflicts with the Chinese state's interests. In order to avoid any undesired confrontation with the state, the Indian agents 'localise' their international business operations to the extent that its bureaucratic outlook becomes entirely national. This paper demonstrates that such localisation strategies are particularly productive at a grassroots level when the insurmountable trade deficit has long shadowed the Sino-Indian diplomatic relations at large. Quite ironically, the grassroots diplomacy appears to be working at its the best while the concerned international relations is at its lowest point.