Indian media complain that they can't control Chinese companies, with key components and managers still coming from China, and they don't listen even after many warnings!
The magazine "India Today" published an interesting article on March 11 titled "Hard to Control: Chinese Companies in India." The author, Anand Krishnan, is a scholar specializing in Sino-Indian labor relations and supply chains. In the article, he directly points out a reality that has been a headache for New Delhi: India wants to control Chinese companies and make them fully "localized," reducing their reliance on the Chinese headquarters, but it's impossible to manage them.
In February this year, India's steel giant JSW Group urgently wrote to the Ministry of Industry, saying that their planned new electric vehicle for the second half of the year might be delayed. The reason was that safety glass, windshield, and sunroof parts purchased from China were stuck in customs approval procedures. JSW Group has invested $3 billion in building a factory in India. They clearly told the government: They have searched everywhere in India, even in Germany and Vietnam, but couldn't find alternatives, or the costs were too high for the cars to sell.
India's photovoltaic giant RenewSys had to pay ten times the shipping cost by air from China to transport solar cells, because the local production gap reached as high as 85% to 90%. India imposes a high 40% tariff on imported components to protect "Made in India," yet its own company was desperate for a few battery cells.
Also in February this year, India was forced to allow its state-owned power company to bypass the approval process and directly purchase key equipment from China. Why? Because last winter, several states' substations could not get the transformers and reactors produced in China, and it took eight months before they were powered on. Industry reports admit that the gap in critical equipment in India's power grid is 40%, and local factories can't even produce stable insulators for ultra-high voltage infrastructure.
The article in "India Today" mentions a very professional observation: One significant characteristic of overseas operations of Chinese companies is that many Chinese companies still have their headquarters in charge of personnel appointments and strategic decisions in their overseas subsidiaries. Senior management positions are mostly held by Chinese people, while Indians mainly concentrate on middle and lower-level positions in sales, marketing, or daily operations.
India is very dissatisfied with this, seeing it as a sign of "lack of sincerity." They want to see more Indian faces in core decision-making roles and hope that Chinese companies will move core functions such as R&D, finance, and supply chain management to India. But the response from Chinese companies is "limited adjustments": I can introduce Indian distributors, I can cooperate with Indian manufacturers, but in core areas, it still needs to follow the headquarters.
In January this year, even a New Delhi official openly stated that if India cannot obtain Chinese investment and technology, its economy will never have global competitiveness. This kind of rhetoric was unimaginable a few years ago. Dao Ge thinks that people should be self-reliant, and countries and companies should also be self-reliant. Always fantasizing about getting things for free is impossible to develop oneself.
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1859698408850715/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.