Really just 30 years?
- You have an economy of 4 trillion and China has 19 trillion almost 5 times ahead.
- You are waiting for a fighter jet engine for a year to make your 4th gen fighter aircraft ready whereas China made the world stun by flying sixth-generation aircraft in the sky.
- You are making and promoting the Astro app where as China made Nividia share crash through its Deepseek AI model.
- Instead of the tag of the youngest country India failed to establish a manufacturing industry where as China is referred to as the world’s factory.
- China manufactures 50% world’s EV cars and operates more than 25% of EV cars on its roads where whereas India struggles to have even 2% of EV cars on Indian roads.
- India is still waiting for its first bullet train on track even though technically supported by Japan whereas China operates the world’s largest bullet train network.
- China produces world 50% smartphones and 70% lithium batteries whereas India produces? Do you still remember Micromax phone is being manufactured or not?
- China city can give a tough challenge to European developed country cities in terms of infrastructure whereas India lags basic needs.
- China won 91 total medals in the Paris Olympics where whereas India in the history of the Olympics managed just 41 medals.
Wait don’t get sad we are not behind in everything. We have bitten China and kicked them out of the top position. Any guess in what?
Yes correct population! Yes, we have more poor, unemployed, unskilled, and uncivilized people compared to them.
About 20 years. A lot of answers here are missing basic things like ignoring compounding factor of GDP growth. Here is a simple picture for you.
China’s GDP in 2007 is exactly the same number as India’s GDP in 2023. That is a 16 year difference. The population numbers are also comparable and we are doing apples to apples here. The GDP is a weighing scale and should encapsulate most of the differences. India is quite ahead of China though in self-loathing and people dissing their own country in front of others.
Let’s do some more analysis:
It is in social development where China has a pretty solid lead. China invested early in basic healthcare and literacy during their Communist period. This is one of the reasons why their GDP is so ahead despite their weakness in political system.
In Infra development, India is behind but fixing the fap quite fast. Whether it is 5G availability, airport quality or solar deployments, India is catching up quite fast.
In high tech, China is probably a decade ahead in AI product development and in space programs the things are getting close to a parity in the next couple of years. In digital infra such as UPI or mobile data penetration, India has slight edge.
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I have travelled around China quite a lot, getting invited to their Annual Meeting of New Champions [where their Premier and other top leaders were present] as well as living with lower middle class Chinese families and traveling with them in overnight sleeper trains. China has a lot of fascinating elements and have a great many things we can learn from.
But, most foreigners also can get quite taken by their window dressing elements — such as the Maglev train that runs from the Shanghai airport. If you go their lower middle class apartments and watch their grannies play Mahjong in the corridors their struggles are not very different from ours. I didn’t see any other foreigners in those apartments or buses or barber shops that I went to. And thus it is quite possible that most are not seeing the real picture.
Been part of official government delegations and meetings with their top leaders.
People miss both their key strengths and weaknesses. Their key strengths is not their corrupt party led system, but their female labour force participation. You can see women in every part of Chinese work force. If India fixes this part, the gap in GDP would be drastically reduced. Also, their emphasis on basic education and healthcare is something what our leaders have primarily missed. In terms of superstitions, Chinese are ever bigger than Indians despite the former not having formal religions.
In summary, there are critical segments where India is 30 years behind, some where India is 10 years behind and some where India is comparable or even slightly ahead. Overall, it is safe to say that there is a 20 year gap that India is fast fixing.
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Edit: Some people asked about what about growth rate after 2008. China had a stronger growth for about 3 years after 2007 and after that the growth rate came down substantially. From 2010 onwards, India’s growth has been higher than China’s for the same periods. While India would not match the growth for the 3 years 2008–10, but the growth rate after that can be beaten. Here is some more info on the decade after 2008.
