World

China became advanced economy while India advanced hateful ideology

Over the same decade, there has been a world of difference in the politics and development of the two Asian ‘tigers’

Two species of 'tiger' leader: Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi
Two species of 'tiger' leader: Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi @YRanaraja/X

Over the decade that the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideology took hold of India, things did not stand still in other parts of the world.

In 2015, China’s prime minister Li Keqiang announced a 10-year initiative to reduce China’s reliance on foreign technology and move China from low-cost manufacturer to direct competitor to the most advanced economies: Germany, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and the United States.

This plan was named ‘Made in China 2025’.

It identified sectors like semi-conductors, artificial intelligence, robotics, commercial aircraft, drones, high-speed rail, electric vehicles and batteries, advanced ships and solar panels.

According to its assessment of its own capabilities, these sectors were further classified into ‘behind’, ‘competitive’ and ‘global leader’. According to Bloomberg, in 2015, the Chinese were ‘behind’ in most sectors, competitive in a couple (high-speed rail, batteries) and leaders in solar panels.

The ambition was to ensure that China either moved up to ‘lead’ or became ‘competitive’ in all of these industries.

The announcement of the plan seriously offended America and its allies. America in particular is not used to another nation being ‘global leader’ in anything, because it alone has the gods-given right to dominate the world.

America’s then president Barack Obama also felt threatened by the rise of China — which today has an economy that is approximately two-thirds that of the US, and likely to equal it in the next couple of decades.

After Donald Trump succeeded Obama in 2017, the US slapped tariffs against China. The following year, China’s Huawei came under sanctions and restrictions.

Under President Biden, the US banned the sale of high-end computer chips to China.

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All of these actions were designed to hamper China’s further rise, and the economic partnership that had benefited both nations began to rupture. Today, Trump is willing to penalise Americans by risking inflation through his tariffs — so long as they slow down China’s growth.

While China did not advertise ‘Made in China 2025’ after the initial announcement, the plan continued to be implemented.

In 2025, China has achieved its goal: having become competitive in all the identified sectors and the global leader in half of them. The C919 aircraft, produced by the state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) compares with the Airbus 320 and Boeing 737. Positioning itself to compete with both foreign firms in the domestic market, Comac planes are already being used by airlines.

In January 2025, DeepSeek revealed China’s AI capabilities to the world. This came as a shock to America for two reasons. One: the Chinese did this without having access to the most advanced chips from Nvidia and likely without as much capital as the California firms have. Two: Silicon Valley never imagined it could be equalled by a company from across the Pacific.

Right now, there are only two serious contenders in the race to develop artificial general intelligence — the US and China. Europe and the rest of the world are nowhere on this scene.

Despite facing export controls, Huawei now makes chips that are only a little less advanced than those being made in Taiwan. They may not be ‘cutting-edge’ but they are homemade and, as DeepSeek has shown, Chinese talent can make fewer resources go further than most.

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China makes its own aircraft carriers — the largest was deployed in 2022 — and LNG carriers. This January, it debuted some of the world’s most advanced military aircraft.

When it comes to electric cars, high-speed rail, solar panels, batteries and drones, China has no rival. It is the world’s largest producer, consumer and exporter of electric cars.

It makes 80 per cent of the world’s solar panels, 75 per cent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries (a single Chinese company, CATL, controls one-third of the global market) and 75 per cent of the world’s drones (again, one company, DJI, controls a significant chunk of the global market).

At 40,000 km, two-thirds of the world’s high-speed rail network is in China — and it’s still growing.

For at least 20 years now, the west, especially America, has remained sceptical of China’s growth and believes it will falter sooner rather than later.

China has not obliged.

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Consider that in 1990, on the cusp of our economic reforms, India and China were even; today, China’s economy is six times the size of India’s.

The rupture between India and China after 2020, the tariffs imposed by the United States and a reluctance to grant access to advanced Chinese goods has left Indians only vaguely aware of the progress our neighbour has made.

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In many ways, China is inward looking and the absence of a popular English media there has not made it easy for us to appreciate their progress. Our media’s ignorance or lack of interest in China’s progress has compounded the problem.

While Li Keqiang died in 2023, it is likely he went with a sense of satisfaction about what had already been delivered. We may choose to ignore what the world recognises: that China has become an advanced economy, through a plan conceived and implemented over just one decade.

The very same decade, to remind readers once again, in which the BJP and our prime minister advanced their ideology across India.

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Views are personal. Read more of Aakar Patel's writing here.

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