There is a fashionable argument in Bharat today that China is “far ahead” of us and that catching up with it may take decades. The first part is partly true; the second is largely a matter of perception. China is ahead of Bharat in manufacturing scale, infrastructure, urbanisation, exports, high-speed rail, shipbuilding and several strategic technologies. The numbers are undeniable. China’s 2024 GDP was about $18.7 trillion against Bharat’s $3.9 trillion, while per-capita GDP was roughly $13,300 against $2,700. But “ahead” is not the same as “far ahead” in every dimension. Nor should Bharat confuse China’s extraordinary capacity to manufacture, scale and commercialise technology with a monopoly over innovation. China’s rise has been built on a formidable combination of indigenous research, enormous state investment, industrial policy, aggressive acquisition of foreign technology and an unparalleled manufacturing ecosystem. Western governments have repeatedly documented concerns over forced or pressured technology transfer, acquisition of foreign technology, intellectual-property violations and cyber-enabled theft. The US Trade Representative, for instance, has documented such practices in considerable detail. That does not mean Chinese technology is merely “copied”. That would be another form of lazy thinking. China has developed genuine technological capabilities of its own and has become a major innovator. In 2024, Chinese applicants filed about 1.8 million patent applications worldwide, almost half of global filings, and China has made substantial gains in research and development. The real lesson is therefore more interesting: China mastered the art of absorbing technology, improving it, manufacturing it at scale and relentlessly driving down its cost. That is precisely what Bharat must learn. Consider semiconductors and artificial intelligence. China remains constrained by restrictions on access to the most advanced American chips and semiconductor manufacturing technology. The United States has progressively tightened such controls since 2022. Yet China has responded by accelerating domestic substitution and indigenous semiconductor development. Similarly, Chinese AI has demonstrated that it can compete surprisingly well despite those constraints. DeepSeek’s emergence was a reminder that technological competition cannot be reduced to a simple “America innovates, China copies” narrative. That is why Bharat should neither underestimate China nor worship it. China’s spectacular cities and infrastructure also came from a political-economic system that a democracy cannot simply reproduce. Beijing has been able to mobilise land, capital, local governments and state-owned enterprises on a scale that permits rapid execution. That model has produced extraordinary physical transformation—but it has also produced enormous debt and serious economic distortions. Bharat’s democratic system necessarily involves consultation, litigation, elections, competing interests and slower consensus-building.
There is another part of the Chinese story that admirers of its speed sometimes conveniently forget. The Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution produced immense human suffering. The Cultural Revolution alone brought political persecution, destruction of cultural heritage and widespread violence. The Great Leap Forward resulted in a catastrophic famine and tens of millions of deaths according to mainstream historical estimates. These are not models that a democratic Bharat—or any humane society—should seek to replicate. Nor should Indians develop an inferiority complex because a Chinese city has wider roads or because a Chinese factory produces something at a scale that Bharat has not yet achieved. The more useful comparison is this: China demonstrates what disciplined industrial scale can accomplish. Bharat demonstrates what can be achieved while preserving political pluralism, constitutional institutions and democratic choice. Bharat also has evidence of extraordinary human capability. Its diaspora has built successful enterprises, professional institutions and research careers across the world. But that should not become another sweeping claim that Indians are inherently superior to Chinese. Capability exists on both sides. The decisive question is how effectively a country converts human talent into institutions, manufacturing, research, infrastructure and prosperity. And here lies the real challenge. Bharat cannot afford either complacency or self-contempt. It should study China’s successes without importing China’s political system. It should learn from America’s innovation ecosystem without becoming dependent on America. It should build domestic semiconductor capability, defence manufacturing, robotics, AI, shipbuilding, electronics and advanced materials—not merely assemble imported components. There is already movement in that direction. India’s electronics manufacturing has expanded dramatically, although dependence on imported components, particularly from China, remains substantial. At the same time, Apple’s expanding manufacturing footprint in Bharat illustrates how global supply chains are beginning to diversify beyond China. The message, therefore, should not be that China is insignificant. It is anything but that. The message should be that China is a formidable competitor, not an unreachable civilisation from another century. Worshipping China is as unproductive as dismissing it. Bharat’s task is not to become China. It is to become a more productive, technologically capable and prosperous Bharat—without surrendering the freedoms and institutional choices that distinguish a democracy. The gap is real. So is the opportunity to narrow it. What Bharat needs now is neither inferiority nor chest-thumping, but confidence backed by manufacturing, research, skills, infrastructure, institutional reform and sustained execution. China showed the world what scale can achieve. Bharat now has the opportunity to show what scale, innovation and democracy can achieve together.
