Project Sword
Will India replace China? India or China? These are two propositions that the whole West is concerned about. As the world's most populous country, India's economic development in recent years has indeed been remarkable. The huge demographic dividend and strong development momentum have made Western countries start to bet heavily on India while hyping up the "China threat theory". Especially in the field of manufacturing, at the moment when "decoupling from China" is prevalent, Western countries generally hope that India will replace China as the new "world factory". However, in the long run, it will be difficult for India to develop into the next China.
In terms of GDP equivalent to purchasing power, India has indeed become the world's third largest economy after the United States and China, and its GDP has even surpassed that of the former suzerain, the United Kingdom and Japan, becoming an important part of the world economic system. However, fundamentally speaking, India's rapid economic development in recent years has been largely supported by external forces. Especially after the contradictions between China and the Western world continue to intensify, the United States and other Western countries have allowed India to get a steady stream of foreign enterprises and capital by transferring part of the ** chain. Due to India's own large and cheap labor force, in order to develop the economy, India has launched a series of preferential policies, which has made European and American companies pour into the Indian market.
Fundamentally, however, "unstable" and "unsolid" are still the criticisms of the Indian economy. In terms of capital chain, India itself does not have abundant capital reserves and is extremely dependent on overseas capital. Speaking of the core manufacturing industry, India lacks core technologies in many fields, and it is also full of holes in the first chain link, and it cannot be self-sufficient. Relatively speaking, China is not only the world's largest manufacturing country, but also has the world's most complete and largest industrial system and industrial chain. From manufacturing capacity to supporting capacity to industrial categories and multi-level labor, India cannot compete with China, it is difficult to support the global ** chain, and it is impossible to become the world's factory.
Although India has also implemented reforms in recent years to learn from China's endogenous growth model of building a large market, some long-standing problems have not yet found suitable solutions. In terms of population, this is a double-edged sword for India's economic development. The huge labor force is a favorable condition for India to attract foreign investment, but there are great shortcomings in India's labor force in terms of population quality and population social structure. In particular, due to the uneven impact of education, India has both a large number of overseas elites and a large number of illiterates. We can see that even in some Fortune 500 Western companies, there are many Indian technical elites and senior management, but in India, there are few "turtle elites". The shortage of high-quality labor in the middle and lower ranks has limited India's development of high-end manufacturing and technology industries. Taking India's military industry as an example, the poor reputation of "Made in India" can be said to be a household name.
In terms of the state system, India is a scattered federal country, although the territory is vast, but the regional development is very different, the rich and the poor are uneven, coupled with complex ethnic and religious problems, the Indian economic market has not been able to achieve unity. At the same time, India's domestic bureaucracy is extremely serious, which not only leads to the scarcity of listed companies in India, but also the extremely low economic freedom index, which makes the commercialization process in India extremely slow, and many industrial developments are interfered with and affected.
Especially in terms of business environment, although foreign companies and external capital are the core of India's economic development, India** is engaged in "wool-picking" behavior that harms others and itself under the banner of fairness and openness. While being vigilant against and rejecting foreign enterprises, India regards the international community as a child's play and frequently uses the best means to interfere in the investment and operation of foreign enterprises. In recent years, including China's Xiaomi, as well as Google, Amazon, Nokia, Samsung and other well-known overseas enterprises, have encountered India's first difficulties and fines, a large number of enterprises have lost their investment and have withdrawn from the Indian market, India has also left a "foreign capital cemetery" notoriety. Western countries are betting all their weight on such India, hoping that India will replace China as the world's factory, which can only be said to be self-amusing and humiliating.