Indian media study China's rise, drawing a depressing conclusion: it's too hard to imitate Chinese enterprises!

Recently, several mainstream Indian media outlets have begun to intensively analyze the path of China's manufacturing rise, especially focusing on those seemingly unremarkable yet dominant "specialized, refined, unique, and innovative small giants" in global niche markets. The result is a near-pessimistic judgment: Indian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are almost impossible to replicate China's successful model.

Indian media found that by 2025, China had about 14,600 national-level "specialized, refined, unique, and innovative small giant" enterprises. Although these companies are not large, they have been deeply involved in specific technical fields for many years, possess independent patents, and their products are exported to dozens or even hundreds of countries. For example, Zhuji in Zhejiang Province, known as the "Socks City," produces over 20 billion pairs of socks annually, accounting for nearly one-third of the global output; the eyewear industry in Danyang, Jiangsu Province, supplies nearly half of the world's lenses. These are not achieved through individual efforts but through the highly collaborative, clearly divided, shared supply chain, and infrastructure of thousands of small enterprises within a geographical region.

In contrast, India has more than 63 million MSMEs, making it one of the largest in the world, with nearly 40% of the workforce employed. However, the problem is that most of these enterprises have annual revenues of less than $100,000, an average lifespan of less than seven years, and over 90% remain confined to local markets, unable to integrate even India's domestic supply chain, let alone enter the global value chain.

Where does this gap come from? The root lies in completely different industrial organization logic.

Since the 2000s, China has promoted a "clustered industry" strategy through local government-led initiatives, industrial parks as carriers, and supporting financial and technological policies. A town or county focuses resources on a single product, with the government building roads, constructing standard factories, introducing testing centers, organizing group exhibitions, and connecting with universities for research—this is not a scattered subsidy, but precise "nesting to attract phoenixes." More importantly, this mechanism has been operating for over two decades, with strong continuity and execution capability.

India's situation is exactly the opposite. Central and state policies frequently change, with dozens of MSME support programs, but they are fragmented, application processes are complex, and implementation efficiency is low. Worse still, India lacks truly meaningful industrial clusters. Similar enterprises are scattered across the country, resulting in high logistics costs, slow technology diffusion, and inconsistent quality standards. For example, in the textile industry, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh each operate independently, without forming an integrated ecosystem like Shaoxing's "fabric-dyeing-clothing-export" system.

Therefore, Indian media themselves have realized that India's current situation of division among states makes it impossible to imitate China's successful experience.

Original: toutiao.com/article/1854164448514123/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author himself.