By M Muneer, Fortune-500 advisor, start-up investor, and co-founder, Medici Institute for Innovation | X: @MuneerMuh
The Viksit Bharat vision aspires towards a $30 trillion economy by 2047—yet, barring bold recalibrations, experts peg the timeline of crossing that milestone closer to 2050. Meanwhile, China races ahead, predicted to touch $42 trillion by then. Once dismissed as a low-cost, copycat factory floor, China has stealthily morphed into a deep-tech juggernaut—leading in artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, biotech, and green energy. This transformation is no accident; it’s the product of architected statecraft, strategic investments, and a techno-nationalist vision.
India now stands at a significant crossroads. It boasts of a formidable youth bulge, a globally entrenched diaspora, and a vibrant digital backbone. Yet, it lacks a DeepSeek moment. While the Chinese playbook holds critical cues, mimicry alone won’t suffice. What India needs is not imitation, but intentional innovation powered by clarity of vision and consistency of execution. A closer look at the Chinese techno-ascendancy reveals six major planks of policy thrust:
Techno-nationalist industrial policy: In 2015, China launched the “Made in China 2025” industrial strategy, aimed towards dominating ten core technology sectors. From subsidies and tax incentives to state-backed venture capital, the government push led to the rise of behemoths like DJI (drones), Huawei (telecom), and SenseTime (AI). It took a decade to see tangible results, which included strategic decoupling from foreign tech dependencies, acceleration of indigenous innovation, and global tech leadership.
Prodigious R&D investment: China’s R&D investment skyrocketed from under $100 billion in 2006 to over $440 billion in 2022, making it the second-largest spender globally. More crucial was the surgical precision of the spends. Through five-year plans and innovation blueprints, the budget was channelled into sectors like AI, 5G, semiconductor fabrication, aerospace, and biotechnology. The agenda was to enable indigenous capability and a parallel innovation ecosystem without excessive Western dependency. Institutions like Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have been given autonomy and funding to pursue moonshot research. Results became salient after a decade of consistent investment. The current AI supremacy was seeded in 2010.
STEM human capital armature: China produces over 1.4 million science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates annually, which is double that of the US. Its universities like Tsinghua and Peking rival the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford in talent output. Initiatives like the Thousand Talents Plan helped reverse brain drain by offering lucrative research grants, labs, and prestige. It has taken more than a decade to reshape this talent landscape and get a vertically integrated knowledge economy where research transitions into application.
Silicon clusters with Chinese characteristics: Zones like Zhongguancun in Beijing and Shenzhen’s Greater Bay Area have been cultivated as high-density innovation biotopes. The government ensured the integration of academia, industry, and state labs in these zones to drive serendipitous collaboration for faster market-readiness. It took around a decade to build such matured ecosystems, but today, these are localised centres for global innovation leadership.
The alchemy of PPP: China pioneered a unique model, titled “Guidance Funds”, which is a public-private partnership (PPP) to seed tech ventures. These funds, now over 2000, control nearly $900 billion. This confluence of state vision and private acumen gave birth to thousands of start-ups, especially in deep tech. It has taken 3-5 years to germinate such an ecosystem and will take much longer for returns. The impact? De-risked innovation, diversified capital pool, and sustained funding beyond hype cycles.
Bureaucracy as first adopter: From AI surveillance systems to smart city initiatives, the Chinese state has itself become an enormous tech consumer by adapting emerging tech first. This resulted in a massive domestic market for new-tech, giving startups an unparalleled sandbox for experimentation. Such initiatives take almost no time to mature. The impact has been terrific—Iterative learning, training data accumulation, and early revenue.
Even with a brutal majority, the government of India cannot mimic the authoritarian capitalism of China, but it can emulate its strategic intentionality. Here are six policy interventions that might recalibrate India’s 2047 trajectory:
A national techno-strategic doctrine: India needs a unifying doctrine, echoing the ambition of “Made in China 2025,” but rooted in democratic pluralism. The Niti Aayog can lead this with global industry and academia collaboration and aim to delineate moonshot sectors, benchmarks, and ethical parameters. The impact should be on cohesion in policymaking and investor confidence. Tangible results will be seen within a year of formulation and implementation.
Sovereign deep-tech funds: Similar to the guidance funds, India should establish sovereign venture capital pools in collaboration with state governments, specifically for high-risk, high-reward ventures in deep tech. It will take 3-5 years to see visible impact in terms of financial scaffolding for capital-starved hi-tech domains.
Revamp STEM and research institutions: Curricula must be updated to include AI, quantum theory, computational biology, and applied sciences. Co-location of universities with research parks and incubators should be institutionalised. It will need 7-10 years to see the impact on the industry-ready talent pool.
R&D budget to 2% of GDP: India’s paltry 0.65% GDP allocation to R&D is grossly inadequate. Elevating this to 2% over five years, directed toward AI, materials science, quantum computing, and green tech is non-negotiable. To build foundational scientific capacity and spur intellectual property creation by 2035, this must happen now.
Dispersed innovation clusters: We must move beyond the cities and cultivate clusters in smaller towns, replete with tech parks, investor hubs, and university alliances. This requires the mindset to execute meticulously and promote meritocracy. In 5-8 years, the impact will be visible in the form of geographical democratisation of innovation and mitigation of urban monocentrism.
The State as innovation incubator: India needs to institutionalise procurement policies that privilege indigenous tech—blockchain for land records, AI in health diagnostics, or drones in precision agriculture. Public sector undertakings should become early adopters. The impact on start-ups will be visible in 3-5 years.
China’s deep-tech leadership is of sustained strategic fidelity. India has the intellectual capital, market size, and global goodwill for its own renaissance. What it requires is not political optics, but the executional tenacity. To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” For India, the colour of its model is immaterial; so long as it catalyses invention.