Why has India not developed a developed low-end manufacturing industry like China?

Many people like to pay attention to the outside world, especially those far away places.

In recent years, a wall has been built on the US-Mexico border in North America, Venezuela in South America is starving, Turks are burning dollars in the streets, Syria is experiencing civil strife, and distant European countries are quarreling in parliament. News such as this often appear in various media.

In contrast, as a Chinese from an Asian country, we do not often pay attention to the Asian region, especially the two neighboring countries that have long ignored their development: India and Vietnam.

India is the largest country in the South Asian subcontinent. For many people, the more commonly recognized labels of India are yoga, ascetics on the streets, arhats on motorcycles, and free "tickets" on Indian trains...

In addition to these In addition, there are many unknown things about India.

For example, few people know that India launched its first-generation remote sensing satellite in 1988, which was more than ten years earlier than the time when China successfully launched its Remote Sensing-1 satellite (April 27, 2006). Year.

On May 25, 2007, China successfully launched the Yaogan-2 satellite. The full-color resolution reached 2 meters, but it still lags behind India in technology.

Some people will say that it is nothing special to have a higher resolution of a remote sensing satellite camera. People who look at the problem this way have not yet realized the consequences of this technological gap. After the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, because the quality of satellite images captured by domestic remote sensing satellites could not meet actual needs, it took many days to obtain high-resolution disaster area information images provided by foreign countries, thus losing valuable timeliness.

Let’s talk about India’s automobile industry.

In 2008, the Indian automobile company "Tata Motors", headquartered in Mumbai and one of the top ten global commercial vehicle manufacturers, acquired Jaguar Land Rover from Ford and officially established Jaguar Land Rover Automobile Company.

In 2010, another Indian automobile company, Mahindra & Mahindra, acquired the equity of Ssangyong Motors 70, South Korea's fourth largest automobile manufacturer, which once produced jeeps for the US military, and officially became Ssangyong. (Ssangyong)’s new owner.

Previously in 2004, Ssangyong Motors was acquired by Shanghai Automotive Group Co., Ltd., but the two parties ended their cooperation in 2009.

In 2016, India's automobile production has surpassed South Korea and become the world's fifth largest automobile producer. In 2017, India's new car sales reached more than 4 million units, surpassing Germany and ranking fourth in the world.

India, the second country in Asia to manufacture cars, has a domestic car market as huge as China. However, unlike the many foreign brands in the Chinese car market, India’s domestic cars are not as popular in the domestic market. The share reached more than 60%.

Let’s talk about India’s software industry.

In 1989, the total output value of the Indian software industry was only US$20 million, which increased to US$50 million in 1990 and reached US$4 billion in 1999. By 2004, India's software export value had reached US$12 billion, exported to more than 100 countries around the world.

It will be difficult for me to find more data on Indian software exports in the future, but it is known that Indian software export volume is second only to the United States.

In just a few decades, India has become the world's second largest software exporter.

In addition, Indians also account for a large proportion of software companies in Silicon Valley.

There are also Indian pharmaceuticals.

Not only Chinese people go to India to buy Gleevec, but Japanese and Koreans also go to India to buy Gleevec. Not only Gleevec, but also many anti-cancer drugs are popular for purchasing. India produces nearly a quarter of the world's generic drugs, and more than half of them are exported to developed countries and regions such as Europe, Japan, and the United States. Because the efficacy of Indian pharmaceuticals is visible.

There is also nuclear power generation in India.

Currently, there are 22 nuclear power plants in operation in India. It is expected that nuclear power generation will account for 50% of India's total power generation by 2050.

For Chinese people, there are too many things in India that are not understood but worth learning from, and I cannot list them all here. Although India has made many jokes in the world, they have indeed done better in some aspects.

On the other hand, which country in the world does not make jokes? There are also many jokes in other countries, and they are not small.

Finally, let me say a few words about Indian agriculture.

In the mid-1960s, a severe drought occurred in eastern India and a serious food crisis occurred. India began to import food.

Later, the Indian government began to implement a modern agricultural development strategy known as the "Green Revolution". After decades of hard work, India's agricultural development has also achieved remarkable results.

This country with a population of 1.35 billion ranked first in the world in terms of rice export volume in 2018.

At the same time, India is the world's second largest wheat producer and also exports wheat. In the 2018/19 season (April to March of the following year), India exported 226,225 tons of wheat. Data from the state-owned Food Corporation of India show that India's wheat stocks at the beginning of October 2019 were 39.3 million tons, nearly double the normal buffer stock of 20.7 million tons.

On the other hand, China is the world’s largest food importer.

In the past ten years, China's rice imports have increased ninefold. In 2013, China became the world's largest rice importer.

Comparing China and India, two countries with a population of more than 1 billion, an interesting phenomenon emerges: India ranks first in rice exports in the world, and China ranks first in rice imports in the world. One person.

Having said so much, some people may think that this is bragging about India. Because India's area is less than one-third of China's, its GDP is also obviously lower than China's. If someone now says that India may surpass China in the future, no one will believe it.

This is like taking the time back to 1886, when Li Hongzhang arrogantly reprimanded Japanese diplomats in Tianjin for the Sino-Japanese Nagasaki incident. If someone had told him at that time, Japan would overtake it eight years later. Of course Li Hongzhang would not believe it when the Qing Dynasty gave the Qing Dynasty a Sino-Japanese War of Sino-Japanese War.

But two years before that, in 1884, also in Tianjin, Ito Hirobumi saw Li Hongzhang for the first time ten years later.

After Ito Hirobumi returned to Japan from Tianjin, he responded to the Qing Dynasty's Westernization Movement. It rose rapidly and prospered in the early stage, but soon became entrenched and stagnated, and in the later stage it became a mess and chaos. judge.

At that time, Japan was aware of this trend of the Manchus. It first annexed Ryukyu as a test, and then pressed forward step by step, first cutting off Taiwan, and then trying to conquer the Northeast... Of course, this way The result was also because the Manchus themselves screwed up, so naturally they couldn't stop others from doing it again.

Of course, there are many reasons to believe that history will avoid the same mistakes in the future, and there are also many reasons to suspect that history may repeat a similar trajectory.

However, today, there is not only one India in Asia that looks north to Tibet and south, and has included China’s territory of Ladakh into its territory, but there is also an India that asserts sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands and is following China’s lead in comprehensive reforms. of Vietnam.

In recent years, Vietnam's economy has grown rapidly and is moving towards becoming a major manufacturing country. How fast Vietnam is developing, some people say it is very similar to China 20 years ago.

In 2019, a truck smuggling incident occurred in the UK, resulting in the deaths of 39 Vietnamese. Once upon a time, a group of Chinese people used this method to sneak into the UK, bringing a steady stream of wealth to their hometown. In the Dover tragedy in the UK on June 18, 2000, 58 stowaways from China died of suffocation in a truck compartment. Twenty years later, what the world has seen is another group of Vietnamese people striving for development...

Thirty years in Hedong, thirty years in Hexi, families and countries have risen and fallen, one after another. .

While China is about to face an era of population aging, Vietnam, with a population of nearly 100 million, is now in its prime.

If you look back at the not-too-distant history, in 1861, when the Manchu Qing Dynasty launched the Westernization Movement to enrich the country and strengthen the army, Japan was still in the chaotic late shogunate period.

In 1886, when the iron-clad giant ships of the Beiyang Fleet of the Qing Dynasty sailed in the Japanese waters, the Japanese navy after the Meiji Restoration did not have any decent warships.

However, they caught up within ten years.

Before the Sino-Japanese War, the Manchu and Qing Dynasties were tired of dealing with Western countries, and no one took Japan, an island country, seriously. Just like some people today look at India and Vietnam and laugh at them from time to time.

Li Hongzhang, who was engaged in Westernization and construction of Beiyang, also laughed at Japan. The disastrous defeat of the Sino-Japanese War also brought him deep pain.

The world is round, and in a sense, the world is also flat. How fast and far you could run twenty years ago does not represent the speed ten years later.

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Indian Navy

Today India and Vietnam are accelerating. Although they are not very large, if the country running ahead suddenly If they stagnate or fall down, they may catch up one after another.

People say that confidence is a kind of ability, but sometimes luck is also a kind of ability.

Today, Japan, a humble country, is not only accumulating huge social wealth, but also continuously improving Japan’s scientific research strength with a Nobel Prize almost every year.

In addition, in the north of Asia, there is a country called Russia. Russia once tried to rush into Europe westward. After being blocked, it tried to rush eastward into Asia. After the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, Russia gradually Withdrew from Northeast China. In recent years, Russia seems to be in a state of depression, doing nothing, and waiting for something.

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Not to mention the too-distant future, people can still predict what the world will look like ten years from now based on their own feelings.

Don’t look at the emotional uproar in Europe and the United States every day. This one is leaving the European Union and that is impeachment. Outsiders see it as shocking, but others themselves are calm.

Because, after all, they have a solid social foundation that spans hundreds of years. Even after two world wars, nothing changed for them.

Britain is still so aloof, France is still so romantic, Germany is still so real...On this point alone, Asian countries cannot compare, and many Asian countries have unstable temperaments.

Ten years from now, Europe and the United States may still be the same Europe and America, and Asia may no longer be the Asia it is now.