India needs to adopt a more liberal attitude towards Chinese participation in its economy, said Jairam Ramesh, secretary of the Economic Affairs Department of the Congress Party, said on Tuesday.

"If we think that China is a security threat and Chinese think that India is not going to open up certain sectors for them, the economic relations between the two countries will not go far," he said at a seminar organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.

The volume of trade between India and China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, has grown to $9 billion in the last four years and constitutes about 8 per cent of the total Indian trade of $110 billion.

While trade with China is important to India, trade with India is not as much critical to China, he said. India needs to change this asymmetry, he added.

Citing examples of Chinese firms being barred from entering certain sectors in India, he said that while the Indian industry is ready to take on China, the political and security establishments are not ready for increased participation with that country.

The Indian manufacturing sector, like the services sector, was also competitive and this had been demonstrated by the success of companies like Tisco in mainland China.

Both the countries were at par in many sectors in the mid-seventies, but China has progressed a lot in these years, he said, adding that though the Chinese experience cannot be fully replicated due to the difference in social and political systems, lessons can be learnt from it.