When Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently urged citizens to buy “Made in India,” the message seemingly travelled beyond Indian shores to Beijing.
Chinese economists and analysts are watching closely, weighing India’s ambitions against its realities. Can India challenge Beijing’s manufacturing dominance and reduce its reliance on China and the United States, or will it remain a dream buffered by slogans and structural bottlenecks?
Structural constraints
Chinese analysts frame Modi’s “Make in India” push amid US trade tensions as part policy incentive, part strategic messaging. Commentators highlight India’s 1.4-billion-strong market asserting autonomy, using consumer behaviour and industrial policy to influence global supply chains. A Weibo post highlighted Modi’s firm stance against US President Donald Trump; another noted he no longer wants to rely on the US.
Yet challenges loom large. Economic analysts Zhang Xiaoxu, Liang Zeheng, and Wang Shouyang note that the share of manufacturing in India’s GDP has slipped from 15 percent to around 14 percent, job creation remains limited, and only $ 1.7 billion of planned incentives have been disbursed. Success is uneven: mobile phones and pharmaceuticals thrive, while textiles, steel, and solar lag. Bureaucracy, weak enforcement, poor centre-state coordination, judicial delays, and under-skilled labour continue to slow progress.
Zhao Wei, a financial and macroeconomic commentator, added that India’s structural weaknesses in society, politics, and governance constrain industrialisation. Modi’s reforms aim to strengthen national capability, but they are not enough to fully realise his vision.
The auto sector illustrates the challenge. General Motors’ protracted exit, blocked for years by unions, courts, and bureaucracy, revealed the costly “exit barriers”, a Chinese commentator highlighted. Comparisons with Singapore, Germany, and the UK reinforce doubts about India’s capacity to scale manufacturing to China’s level.
Even Modi’s claim that “India’s greatest enemy is dependence on other countries” is seen as aspirational in Chinese circles. Despite a decade of “Make in India,” 90 percent of chips, 70 percent of fighter jet parts, and most pharmaceutical ingredients and solar modules still come from abroad, largely China.
External shocks—Russian arms delays, US tariffs, reliance on Chinese inputs—underline India’s vulnerability. For Chinese observers, ‘slogans cannot substitute structural reforms: without it, Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) risks remaining a myth, not a model.’ A Baijiahao commentary echoed this: “The dream looks sweet, but reality is bitter. A massive talent gap, shaky infrastructure, sluggish policies, and total reliance on foreign technology persists in India. Unless India breaks through these hard bones, its chip autonomy will remain an expensive illusion.”
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Recognition of emerging competitiveness
Chinese analysts also recognise India’s growing industrial clout. A Weibo post highlighted India’s strategy of importing machinery and raw materials from China, assembling locally, and exporting to Europe and the US, gradually shaping a “Made in India” global supply chain. India benefits from a young, low-cost workforce and fluency in English, while China faces rising labour costs and trade frictions, giving India a window to emerge as a serious competitor.
Yet caution persists. Zhang Yi, director of the Institute of Social Development Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warned that many jobs are low-quality, risking wasted human capital, and stressed the need to overcome technological bottlenecks. Zhang Xiaoxu, assistant researcher at the Institute of Mathematics and Systems Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, identified two paths of China-to-India industrial transfer: partial transfer, which still relies on China’s supply chain, and full relocation, building independent Indian chains. India shows promise in computers, base metals, electrical equipment, and automobiles.
The 2025 iPhone 17 launch highlighted this shift: Indian-made units now account for 44 percent of Apple’s US sales, while China’s share has fallen to 25 percent, reflecting tariffs and supply chain diversification. Analysts noted India’s advantages—cheap labour, young workforce, and government incentives—but flagged weak infrastructure and quality concerns. The “dual-centre” model emerges: India as an assembly hub, China controlling high-value production.
Even as India rises and strives for self-sufficiency, economic analysts Su Qingyi and Gui Zihaoa argued that the latest round of global industrial transfer is driven as much by geopolitics as economics, with the US-China strategic rivalry reshaping supply chains. China’s dominance as the world’s factory is evolving into a multi-factory model, “China + N”, with ASEAN, India, and Mexico taking over parts of labour-intensive production. Rising wages in China and relocation costs mean the era of cheap labour-intensive goods is ending. In East Asia, China increasingly supplies intermediate goods while ASEAN handles assembly for export, particularly to the US.
While supply chain “de-risking” and reduced consumption of Chinese goods are pursued, these goals are contradictory and unlikely to be fully achievable in the short term, given China’s remaining production advantages, scale, and investments. The verdict is that India may capture short-term gains, but China’s ecosystem and skilled labour ensure long-term dominance. Yet India’s rise, in Chinese views, also serves as a spur for China to accelerate its own industrial upgrading.
A cautious admiration
Across Chinese commentary, a consistent theme emerges, that is, India is ambitious but constrained. Policymakers and businesses are innovating, leveraging labour, global trade dynamics, and industrial policy. Yet systemic inefficiencies and uneven execution temper expectations. India may not rival China’s manufacturing dominance yet, but it is increasingly seen as a serious player in the global industrial landscape.
China is watching closely, recognising India’s gradual industrial rise without assuming it aims to overtake its neighbouring country immediately. The view in China is that Modi’s push for Swadeshi and domestic manufacturing initiatives could accelerate this process, helping India shift supply chains, attract investment, and expand its industrial footprint. While challenges remain, India’s approach is deliberate, positioning it as an emerging player whose influence on the global stage is beginning to be felt.
Sana Hashmi is a fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation. She tweets @sanahashmi1. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)