India can learn from China’s discipline, scale & deep reform. PM Modi has already begun

When he was Gujarat CM, Narendra Modi visited China several times & saw its progress first-hand. As prime minister, he brought discipline, planning, and reform to his office.

File photo of PM Modi and President Xi Jinping at the BRICS Summit | ANI

India and China hadn’t spoken to each other since 15 June 2020, when Indian and Chinese troops engaged in a bloody clash following the Chinese incursion into Ladakh’s Galwan Valley. Diplomatic, business, and academic exchanges came to a halt, and 30 border talks took place since.

On 23 October, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping revived bilateral ties at the BRICS Summit in Kazan. They came to a disengagement and patrolling agreement and arrived at a resolution of issues on the border. This has opened up the prospects of some normalcy in the bilateral ties, but so far, the status quo remains.

During the four years between these events, India and China restricted their conversations to their civilisational pasts.

Two great civilisations of Asia

In July 2024, the China National Academy of Governance, Beijing held a closed-door conference on ‘India-China: Cultural Exchanges and Mutual Learning’.

The topic is appropriate at a time when world history is in transition and multilateralism is starting to challenge a unipolar order. This time, a more confident Asia—East, Central, South, and West—is at the centre of the change.

The re-emerging Asia is bookended by the two great civilisations of India and China, both of which are visible on the world stage today as they were hundreds of years ago. They are not natural partners, but they have common concerns domestically and internationally, stemming from their size—each being over 1.4 billion in population. At home, both seek to employ, educate, and provide their citizens with a living standard of moderate comfort. Externally, India and China seek an active place in the multilateral order.

Geopolitically and strategically, however, they stand apart. For more than a century, the two countries have seen and engaged with each other through the West—first Britain and now the US. A better understanding of each other is therefore necessary, of both commonalities and differences.

As two nations with large populations, comprising 37 per cent of the world, China and India have to follow a path of development that is not dissimilar. Different political and economic systems mean that their pace is at variance, as is their means. Nevertheless, comprehending each other’s paths is needed, and there is much they can learn from the other. Much of what India can be, is visible in China. Much of what India is, can be learned by China.

China reformed early, used communism’s discipline to make its people work, and built its infrastructure at scale, planning for the long term.

Reform, discipline, scale

The country began reforming its largely rural economy in 1978. By the time it was ready to become a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001, it was prepared. It took help from the West and Japan, to relearn all it had lost during the Cultural Revolution. It hired Western management and accommodated the West’s demands and systems, but denied those companies access to its large market, allowing them to manufacture at home for export alone, building its own systems simultaneously.

Consequently, China understands discipline. This is the outcome of Confucianism, and later communism as a political system, with a single command and not multiple voices. A multiplicity of voices may reside within the Communist Party, but not outside of it. Public messaging on personal and national discipline has been ongoing since the days of Chairman Mao, and now, in Xi’s time as well. Like communism everywhere, it has produced excellence in the areas of sport, and lately, science. The choices offered to the public are not of thought, but mostly consumer choices.

China understands scale. It thinks, plans, builds, and implements at scale. Whether it is schools, factories, cities, highways, or ports, China has mastered scale. This has enabled it to become the world’s factory. It has inserted itself into simple and sophisticated global supply chains, and grown them substantially.

China envisioned its biggest foreign policy project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), at scale. The China State Construction Co, one of the implementors of the BRI, has completed 1,000 projects in 100 countries, each worth over $100 million, over 30 years.

Foreign policy thinking at scale has enabled China to use its young talent and embed it in the international system, particularly in the UN and its affiliates. Through organisations like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), China has aligned its long-term planning.

Chinese companies with global technology, capacity, and scale are now linked to the UN systems. For instance, through the ITU and WIPO, Chinese national champions like Huawei and its standards are embedded in the UN development work in critical geopolitical areas like the Pacific Islands. The UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), endorses and is connected to the BRI.

This has helped China lift its population out of poverty and become what is now acknowledged by the World Bank to be an “upper middle-income country”.

Rise of China

July 2024 revealed a China that compares favourably to the pre-Covid China of 2018. It shows the remarkable journey the country has taken over just the last six years, establishing it firmly as a nation of educated, higher income citizens. Earlier, China’s double-digit growth of 14.2 per cent in 2007 moderated to 6.6 per cent in 2018, just as its tech sector was taking off. During Covid, growth was just 2.2 per cent—a shock to the system.

Nevertheless, Beijing used its Covid years well, with continued ambitions on reform, discipline, and scale, to complete the buildout of its physical infrastructure. It is now at first-world levels, and given China’s expertise, sometimes even more advanced.

Public transport, buildings, and arenas are grand, large, and landscaped. The streets of China’s towns and cities are multimodal and meticulous, all with graded pavements. The first, second, and even third-tier cities have wide green medians, almost as resplendent as those on New York’s Park Avenue. Villages have concrete roads and multiple-storey buildings. Japanese and German cars of 2018 have been replaced with Teslas and Chinese-made EVs.

The rise of China’s human capital is on full display: from just 18 PhDs in 1978, China awarded 56,000 doctorates in 2022. That’s second to the 71,000 awarded by the US and twice that of India’s 28,000 PhD degrees. At the lower levels, the estimated 7 million delivery persons in China have school or vocational degrees, and some in the business are overeducated. (India’s total gig economy workers are estimated to be about 7.7 million.)

For an Indian, China has much that is familiar. China’s rural population is about 500 million, while India’s is 900 million. Both countries feature internal migration from villages to towns and cities, a dedication to education and family, and a tech-savvy citizenry and economy. Post Covid, there are also visible, in public, the green sprouts of Buddhism; the Chinese Communist Party now refers to it as one of its three “philosophies”, along with Taoism and Confucianism.

India has similar compulsions, but took a different path—one that was uneven, often with hesitations, accommodative to a fault, democratic, and culturally diverse. But this path is starting to achieve similar goals of development, wealth creation, cultural preservation, and self-respect.

In this effort, there is much that India can learn from China, in terms of discipline, scale, long-term thinking, and deep reform. Some of that began to take place under the Narendra Modi government. As chief minister of Gujarat, he visited China several times, saw its progress first-hand, and implemented some of it in his state. As prime minister, he brought discipline, long-term thinking, and reform to his office.

Reform in India

India now has commitments to large infrastructure projects, from city metro transit to highways, ports, and airports. Over the past 10 years, India has seen a 500 per cent increase in its highway budget, with a 60 per cent increase in the road network. Railways have seen a substantial upgrade, with extensive electrification, 100 new trains, and 1,318 stations under redevelopment. The metro network has quadrupled to 945 km, with another 919 km being added in 26 cities. Air connectivity is a big leap, with 545 new domestic routes, and at 158, the number of airports in the country has more than doubled what it was in 2014. Waterways and ports have seen slower development, but they are picking up pace.

Domestic and foreign investors are participating and funding in the large infrastructure buildout, particularly from Japan and West Asia. By 2025, $1.4 trillion will have been spent in this sector. As seen in China, new roads bring markets closer to both producers and consumers. They also bring schools closer to students. What China does with centralised planning, India does through its democracy and society.

The Indian government’s schemes ensure the presence of public schools every 5 kilometres. Competitive politics ensure that students are incentivised to attend classes. Many states provide students, especially girls, with bicycles so they may travel to school more easily. Across India, parents—and now social organisations like Akshaya Patra—ensure that all children receive a warm, nutritious mid-day meal. School enrollment rates are over 95 per cent, in no small part thanks to these social and local political interventions.

Democracy ensures representation to diverse groups, and checks and balances to state power. India has more than 2,000 ethnic groups and 22 official languages. All ethnic groups are represented on the national stage—President Draupadi Murmu is from the Santhal tribal community of eastern India. Private cable and state broadcasters offer channels in over 22 languages.

The country’s cultural diversity has lent its expression to the Indian film industry, which produces over 1,800 films a year in more than 20 languages. These films are now recognised with international awards like the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Through film, traditional Indian dance and music has evolved to accommodate modern ideas—and international resonance, including in China.

Through film, younger generations are able to maintain their contact with tradition, at home and abroad, and adjust to India’s changing social mores. Religiosity across all faiths is increasing. A 2022 Pew study shows that 97 per cent Indians believe in god, feel “very free” to practice their faith, and “borrow from one another’s beliefs in ways that Westerners might find baffling”. Their Chinese counterparts may be catching up.

The Pew Research Center studied the Chinese General Survey Data of 2018, which showed that 33 per cent of Chinese believed in Buddha or bodhisattva. This is evident across Buddhist tourist centres in China like the White Horse Temple and even the Potala Palace in Tibet, which are thronged with thousands of young Chinese seeking Buddha’s blessings.

Rise of India

The development patterns of India and China are still divergent. India may not meet China’s level in the near future, but its managerial power has global reach. The 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s saw uneven growth and India was unable to create enough manufacturing jobs for its educated. Many, especially engineers, went overseas for economic opportunities. Several of those who stayed created world-class software businesses at home and ushered in a new wave of globalisation in the 2000s, giving rise to IT hubs like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune.

Those who did leave have become CEOs of multinational corporations such as Citibank, Mastercard, Microsoft, Google, Deutsche Bank, SoftBank, Pepsi, and Chanel. India is now a critical part of the global digital services supply chain, a promotor of private entrepreneurship, and a producer of top management cadres. Expatriate Indians are increasingly participating in the bureaucracies and political leadership of their adopted home countries.

Apart from bringing in business, the goodwill and trust earned by these global leaders have enabled India’s inward-looking foreign policy to transform with confidence. Relations with non-traditional allies like the US, Japan, the EU, and West Asia have expanded dramatically. This has helped maintain a vital balance in today’s polarised world.

Now that Asia’s second giant is on the rise, it is time for both to reconnect with their past, linked first by knowledge, and then by trade.

Both countries have heft: They comprise nearly 30 per cent of the world’s GDP—China at 19 per cent and India, nearly 10 per cent.

Whichever way they lean, separately or together, counts—it changes the global direction.

Manjeet Kripalani is the Executive Director and co-founder of Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)