China’s state-run media has urged India not to lose focus on lower-cost manufacturing and the benefits of moving its country through industrialisation.
India’s Economic Times reports that China’s state-run Global Times advised India to consider the effect industrialisation had had in China in lifting millions out of poverty since the 1980s.
“Whether India’s fast pace of growth can persist depends on how quickly it realises that the feasible route to inclusive growth is not by skipping past industrialisation but by relying on the manufacturing industry to create more jobs, reduce poverty and create a middle class that can drive consumption,” the article reads.
“…[T]here is scepticism about whether India can efficiently utilise its demographic dividend – the country is set to have the world’s largest working-age population by 2020.”
Narendra Modi’s government launched its Make In India initiative in September 2014, aiming to increase manufacturing’s share from 17 per cent to 25 per cent of Indian GDP by 2025.