In 2023, India's population has surpassed that of mainland China and has become the world's most populous country. Because of India's younger demographics, there is a more abundant workforce.
In order to contain China, the United States took the lead in decoupling from China, allowing some manufacturing capacity to move to India, and there is a voice on the Internet advocating that Indian manufacturing can replace Chinese manufacturing. So can Indian manufacturing really replace China's manufacturing industry? Let's not talk about the internal factors in India, but only the external ones.
The first is the scale of global manufacturing transfers. The transfer of manufacturing industry is the transfer of labor-intensive industries, supporting industries, assembly and other low-end industries in China, and the core industries must naturally remain in their own country, otherwise there will be no manufacturing industry in their own country.
In the last century, when the manufacturing industry of the United States and Europe shifted, the United States was the world's largest industrial country, and the European allies of the United States were the world's second only industrial countries to the United States and Japan, and they had the largest industrial scale in the world.
Now the scale of China's manufacturing industry is equivalent to the sum of the United States and the European Union, that is, the core transfer of the global manufacturing industry is the United States, Europe and China.
China, the United States, and Europe each retained their core manufacturing and then moved outward, with China being the largest, and due to the various sizes, China's manufacturing transfer is more inclined to ASEAN than India. So in terms of the scale of manufacturing transfers, India is already limited.
Second, an important factor in the development of manufacturing is power generation. The world's most mature technology and the lowest cost are thermal power generation, and the most advanced technology of thermal power generation is in the hands of Japan, the United States and several developed countries and China. And these developed countries and China are no longer exporting thermal power generation equipment. That is, to engage in thermal power generation, India will either use outdated equipment, or spend more than ten years of research and development on its own.
Even if India has developed it, now major developed countries and China are engaged in new energy, and environmental protection will become an important indicator of product exports. If India turns to new energy sources, it will require a lot of time and investment, which will also raise product costs and reduce competitiveness.