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What should India learn from China’s tech rise? Not everything

The task before India is not to become China. It is to become a more deliberate version of itself.

China is no longer merely catching up in science and technology. In several sectors, it is now at, or close to, the frontier. The World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index 2025 puts China in the global top ten for the first time. It leads the world in patent filings, with more than 70,000 international patent applications in 2024, and is now the world’s largest producer of science and engineering publications.

The evidence is visible across China’s economy and everyday life. It has built the world’s largest high-speed rail network. Its internet population exceeds 1.1 billion. Its mobile payments, e-commerce, and short-video ecosystems operate at unmatched scale. It accounted for almost two-thirds of global electric car sales in 2024, dominates large parts of the solar photovoltaic value chain, and has manufacturing value added nearly ten times that of India’s.

The question is no longer whether China has progressed, but how. I outline below six mechanisms that have driven China’s remarkable progress, and what India should and should not learn from them.

Also Read: More courses and certifications won’t fix India’s skills gap

Strategic intent and resource allocation

China’s first mechanism has been strategic intent translated into resource allocation. Since Deng Xiaoping’s famous formulation that “science and technology are the primary productive forces,” China has treated technological capability as an instrument of national power. Initiatives such as the 863 and Torch programmes, Project 211, Project 985, Made in China 2025, and the current emphasis on “new quality productive forces” are not isolated slogans. They are markers of a persistent state project to position the country as a global science and technology power.

Industrial policy is not the whole story here. China’s approach has been top-down in intent, but competitive and fragmented in execution. The state sets priorities, and then provinces, municipalities, universities, industrial parks, state enterprises, private firms, and banks compete to implement them. There is waste and overcapacity, but also speed, redundancy, and learning.

The numbers are striking. In 2024, China spent 3.613 trillion yuan on R&D, roughly half a trillion US dollars, or 2.68 per cent of........

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