On October 8, the last day of the China National Day holiday, I met an Indian traveler on the Shenzhen metro. He works in IT in Hong Kong and has previously been to Australia and the United States. We had a long conversation, and his experiences gave me a more direct sense of the global mobility of Indians in the workforce.
Since 2020, due to the pandemic, direct passenger flights between India and China were suspended. Earlier this April, both sides agreed to resume direct flights and simplify visa procedures, improving accessibility for “traveling to China.” According to statistics from Chinese embassies and consulates in India, as of April 9, 2025, over 85,000 visas have been issued to Indian citizens this year. Direct flights between the two countries will be fully resumed by the end of October, with Indigo Airlines launching daily flights from Kolkata to Guangzhou on October 26, and China Eastern Airlines resuming the Shanghai Pudong–Delhi route with three weekly flights starting November 9.
At the same time, the new “K visa” policy implemented by the State Council on October 1 has been reported by Indian media in articles such as “China’s K Visa to Counter the U.S. H-1B Visa” and “Why China’s K Visa Is a Response to Trump’s H-1B Visa Battle,” and entries like “China K Visa Requirements” and “Pakistanis Applying for China K Visa” have become trending searches.
it was said that Chinese people went to Silicon Valley, but now it seems that Indians are coming to China.
Why Has India Become a “Talent Exporting Country”?
Indians are almost everywhere.
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The recent increase in H-1B visa fees under Trump hits precisely this point. As early as 1992, the United States established the H-1B visa program. According to INS statistics from 1998, Indians accounted for 74% of H-1B holders in computer-related fields at that time, earning the H-1B visa the nickname “the Indian visa.”
It can be said that every ambitious Indian carries an “American Dream”: to work overseas in IT outsourcing through intermediary companies, successfully move abroad, and, if lucky, even become a tech entrepreneur in a multinational company. In Indian social and cultural contexts, becoming an overseas IT worker is even linked to marriage prospects. When a family has a successful IT son, the first thing that draws envy—or jealousy—from others is his ability to bring in a substantial dowry. Between 1998 and 2000, shares in IT companies were often included as part of the dowry.
But now, the American Dream has hit a wall. Indian programmers blocked by Trump’s policies must find new destinations. The service market created by Indian labor will also face a reallocation of supply and demand. Global “Body Hunting”: The World Information Industry and India’s Technical Labor notes that even when overseas demand for IT workers is high, layoffs and unemployment can coexist with strong demand, due to constant shifts in the labor market supply-demand curve.
In service industries dominated by “body hunting,” this time it is the globally mobile Indian workforce that is most affected by these fluctuations in supply and demand.
It is worth noting that, beyond IT professionals, roughly half of the overseas Indian population is concentrated in the Middle East. In the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, they work in blue-collar jobs such as construction, transportation, domestic work, and cleaning. Others are spread across Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, and other regions, engaged in small- and medium-sized trade and service industries. In the UAE, Indians constitute the largest foreign community—3.5 million, or one-third of the total population; in Saudi Arabia, the number is 2.5 million; and in Kuwait and Qatar, each hosts over a million Indian workers.
India’s service sector not only supports IT industries in Europe and North America but also forms a significant part of the blue-collar workforce in the Middle East. The recent surge in visa costs, however, reflects a deeper structural problem in India’s economy: relying solely on labor-intensive service work abroad does not allow India to control the initiative in global trade.
Moreover, the outflow of IT talent has caused India to miss opportunities to leapfrog in the mobile internet and AI era. Today, Indian-origin executives lead tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Google. According to OECD data, India sends the largest number of highly educated emigrants worldwide—3.12 million—accounting for 65% of the global share.
In fact, the Indian government has long recognized these structural issues and has been exploring whether India possesses tangible industries beyond IT services. Amid the US-China strategic competition, we are in a period of profound global supply chain restructuring—an historic opportunity for emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Mexico.
So, could seizing this moment to reorganize manufacturing become India’s new “engine of growth”?
Modi’s ‘Make in India’ Decade: Why GDP Is Still Held Hostage by the Service Sector
To start with my answer: manufacturing will bring growth to the Indian economy, but for it to become a pillar industry, it will require more time and investment.
According to foreign media, Apple’s annual sales in India reached a record nearly $9 billion in fiscal year 2025 (ending March 31, 2025, per the Indian market convention), up about 13% from $8 billion in the previous fiscal year.
Driven by expectations of growth in the Indian market, making India a production hub for Apple is an important part of Cook’s global strategy. Bloomberg data shows that in fiscal year 2025 (ending March 2025), iPhone production in India increased by nearly 60% year-on-year, while exports of Indian-made iPhones from April to July 2025 reached $7.5 billion.
This is also the first time in Apple’s history that all new iPhone models are produced in India. Over three years, Apple has expanded from simple assembly to higher value-added manufacturing: components such as glass back covers, metal casings, and battery modules are gradually being produced locally, and its supplier network has grown to more than 45 companies.
Apple’s investment in India can be seen as a typical reflection of the “Make in India” initiative. In 2014, Prime Minister Modi’s government launched “Make in India,” aiming to raise the manufacturing sector’s share of GDP from 15% to 25% by 2030. Ten years on, although the target has not been fully met, changes have indeed occurred.
The government’s PLI (Production-Linked Incentive) scheme has attracted about $19 billion in investment, driving expansion in industries such as mobile phones, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and auto components. The electronics sector has seen the most obvious growth, with giants like Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi all setting up factories in India. According to Indian government data, in the 2025 fiscal year, Apple’s production in India reached $22 billion, with exports up nearly 60% from the previous year, about 80% of iPhones being exported overseas from India. Indian Minister of Communications Ashwini Vaishnaw also stated: “Of the phones sold in India, 99.2% are manufactured domestically.”
After 2020, with the restructuring of global supply chains and the U.S.-China trade tensions, India has become an important focus of the “China + 1” strategy. However, behind the optimism, the “quality control crisis” cannot be ignored: some assembly plants have a product pass rate of only about 50%, and many high-end components still need to be imported from China or Vietnam. In reality, Indian manufacturing is still closer to a “semi-finished goods industry.”
An Indian cross-border e-commerce professional in the apparel industry told Shine Global that, in terms of outcomes, the biggest difference between Indian and Chinese manufacturing is the inability to respond quickly. He explained that the Indian market currently cannot achieve “small-batch rapid response,” because this requires high-value design and comes with very high costs. In a mature industrial setting, the quality inspection efficiency per worker or workstation can reach 1,000 units per day, but with insufficient industrialization, it may only reach about 200 units per day.
Objectively, Indian manufacturing faces significant developmental limitations.
First, there are supply chain shortcomings. India’s industrial ecosystem is weak, particularly in semiconductors, precision molds, and core electronic components. The lack of industrial clusters keeps manufacturing costs high. A single component shipped from Shenzhen to Chennai may travel 6,000 kilometers and face two separate tariffs.
Second, there are infrastructure issues. Despite India’s increased investment in railways, highways, and ports, logistics efficiency remains lower compared with China and Southeast Asia. Unstable power supply, port congestion, and inconsistent regional policies all constrain businesses.
Third, the labor structure is a challenge. India adds more than 12 million new workers annually, but fewer than 30% have industrial skills. A large portion of the population enters low-value-added service jobs, leaving manufacturing unable to absorb the workforce effectively.
Finally, policy and administrative efficiency remain problematic. Foreign companies frequently complain about long approval cycles, complex local tax systems, and fluctuating import tariffs. Even Apple has had to lobby over a single equipment tax regulation. Such institutional frictions make the “Make in India” slogan difficult to implement on the ground.
India’s economy remains dominated by services and consumption. While manufacturing growth is rapid, it has not yet driven a structural transformation. Data shows that while industrial output is rising, investment is expanding, and exports are increasing, the “manufacturing share of GDP” has lingered between 15% and 16% over the past decade.
Developing manufacturing is an inevitable path for India, but industrialization is not achieved overnight. There is still a long road ahead before it is fully realized.
Foreign Companies’Graveyard or Land of Opportunity? India’s Divided Narrative
Interestingly, even though Indians have spread across the world, many still remain within the framework of the ‘Indian narrative’. The inherent class divisions and hierarchical mindset in India are almost rooted in the hearts of the Indian diaspora.
In his work ‘Global ‘Head-Hunting’, the World Information Industry, and India’s Tech Labor’, Xiang Biao writes: In the head-hunting process, the process of ‘nationalization’ is not accompanied by collective efforts, but is instead a ‘personalized’ process. Individualization does not mean a significant transformation of Indian workers’ psychological personalities, nor does it imply that they will adopt Western notions of ‘individualism’. ‘Most of my interviewees were particularly proud that they could uphold “Indian culture” (such as the importance of family and religious devotion) while also carving out a place in the global market.’
In other words, the Indian version of ‘making it’ is to achieve success overseas through professional skills, then marry a high-caste wife and enter the upper class.
What is even more intriguing is that, in the process of foreign companies recruiting Indian employees, many employers believe that ‘only Indians can manage Indians’. This is recorded in ‘Global ‘Head-Hunting’, the World Information Industry, and India’s Tech Labor’: ‘They never feel secure in their jobs. After just three months of work, they start demanding promotions and salary increases. Their eyes are always on other opportunities, constantly looking to jump ship.’ As a result, Indian IT workers are often seen as difficult to manage, and employment agencies are reluctant to deal directly with Indian workers. They tend to recruit Indian workers through labor agencies run by Indians.
In other words, whether Indians have already ‘gone abroad’ to work or are still based in India, they cannot escape the cultural and institutional framework shaped by India.
In a 14-year observation of the Indian market, Tata shared with Shine Global（霞光社） that the entire Indian society, from the top to the bottom, is permeated with a strong mindset, where those in higher positions have significant dominance and control over those at lower levels.
‘For example, one of my Indian clients, when communicating with me (a foreigner), is very gentle and polite, but when dealing with local employees, he is almost extremely harsh and rude. Yet, neither the employees nor he himself sees anything wrong with this,’ he said.
This deeply ingrained hierarchical mindset is closely related to the extreme concentration of wealth in Indian society.
It’s worth noting that a report by the International Monetary Fund points out that India is currently the country with the largest wealth gap among Asia’s major economies. Few are aware that, in seemingly underdeveloped India, there are over a hundred billionaires with fortunes exceeding 1 billion dollars, ranking just behind the US, China, and Russia. In 2017, the combined wealth of this group of billionaires reached 479 billion dollars, and the number of millionaires in India surged to 178,000.
Over the past decade, despite rapid economic growth in India, the wealth gap has only widened. According to a wealth report from Credit Suisse, the wealthiest 1% of the Indian population controls over 40% of the country’s wealth, while the combined income of the bottom 40% is even less than one-tenth of the former. Therefore, most of the economic growth has been captured by a small elite, who make up the most influential business and political networks in the country.
India’s super-rich have significant influence in the domestic industrial and commercial sectors, often walking hand-in-hand with political power. Some have humorously referred to them as ‘Bollywood Oligarchs.’ There is a strong connection between the political and business sectors, summarized in one sentence: ‘The wealth of billionaires mainly comes from three things: land, natural resources, and government contracts and permits.’
In 1949, American economist James Duesenberry proposed the relative income hypothesis: happiness depends on income relative to the social average or one’s position within a peer group. In other words, people would rather earn 5,000 yuan a month while those around them earn 4,000, than earn 10,000 yuan while those around them earn 20,000.
Therefore, when more money is concentrated in fewer hands, the greed for power often overshadows the pursuit of development.
Therefore, Indian billionaires who hold vast wealth and power also fear foreign investment: the large-scale entry of foreign capital could disrupt the existing distribution of wealth. Once global capital breaks industry monopolies and challenges local business conglomerates, it will inevitably touch the core interests of India’s wealthy elite. As a result, protectionism is not just an economic strategy; it is also a defensive mechanism for the political elite. It allows the concentrated wealth structure to persist and helps maintain relative political stability.
It is not surprising that foreign companies, including Chinese enterprises, have faced setbacks in India. In recent years, India’s tax authorities have conducted investigations on several foreign companies such as Shell, Nokia, IBM, Walmart, and Cairn Energy, imposing hefty fines. Many Japanese and South Korean companies also find themselves in similar situations, leading India to be dubbed as the ‘Graveyard of Multinational Corporations.’ ‘But for Indians, they now see themselves as the new growth engine, no longer in a hurry to welcome foreign companies,’ said a cross-border e-commerce practitioner in India to ShineGlobal.
Moreover, in Indian culture, securing favorable conditions in less-than-glorious ways is an ingrained habit. ‘You will often feel the pressure from them towards foreign investments, such as price bargaining, acting as middlemen to profit from the price difference, or even forcing foreign companies to hand over technology, or demanding control over the supply chain. These seemingly unseemly methods are, in fact, the survival strategies of India’s business world.’
In addition to wealth disparities and class divisions, the ‘civilizational time gap’ between different regions also presents resistance to the concept of ‘developmentism’ in various parts of India.
‘Due to the issue of numerous ethnic groups, India has never truly formed a unified nation to this day,’ Tata said. In fact, there has been a long-standing academic and political debate over the ‘formation of the Indian nation’: The political, administrative, and economic structures of India as a ‘unified nation’ were largely constructed during the British colonial period.
Before the British arrived, the Indian subcontinent was not a unified country. It consisted of hundreds of states, dynasties, and tribal communities, with diverse languages, religions, castes, and political systems. The Mughal Empire (a Muslim dynasty) dominated the north, while local powers like the Marathas and Mysore controlled the south. These regions traded and exchanged culture, but there was no centralized concept of an ‘Indian state.’
The word ‘India’ itself evolved from the Persian term ‘Hindustan’ (meaning ‘the land east of the Indus River’), which was more of a geographical reference rather than a political one.
The issue of national integration is an even greater concern. India has 22 official languages and hundreds of ethnic and religious groups. From the north to the south, from the Hindi-speaking regions to the Tamil-speaking areas, there are significant economic and cultural disparities. In such a country, economic policies are often redefined by local politics.
An open policy in Delhi is seen as ‘reform,’ but in poorer states like Bihar and Odisha, it may be viewed as a ‘threat to local workers.’ This compels the Indian central government to exercise restraint when promoting openness, as excessive reliance on foreign capital and the weakening of local industries could exacerbate regional divides.
Protectionism, in this context, is not just an economic choice, but also a political tool to maintain national unity.
Since India’s independence, political anxiety has centered on how to avoid being once again dominated by foreign capital. After independence in 1947, the first prime minister, Nehru, pushed for a planned economy, implementing a strict licensing system (License Raj). Businesses had to go through numerous approvals to obtain production permits, import licenses, and even raw material quotas.
The obsession with ‘self-reliance’ by that generation of Indian leaders shaped the fundamental ethos of the Indian economy: only by controlling production could the country truly achieve independence. In 1991, the foreign exchange crisis forced India to shift toward market reforms, but the direction was not ‘full openness,’ but ‘cautious opening.’ Over the next 30 years, India maintained a ‘semi-open’ status: open to strategic industries like IT, pharmaceuticals, and automobiles, while placing heavy barriers in sectors like agriculture, retail, and telecommunications.
One consensus is that the future of the world lies in India.
India has the world’s youngest population, with an average age of under 30, and the addition of 12 million new workers every year means boundless potential. However, among this young population, women make up half of the total, but only about 30% of them participate in the workforce, which limits India’s potential.
As for foreign companies curious about India, even today, over 200 mobile apps that were banned have not yet resumed operations.
Hindus believe that bathing in the Ganges can cleanse one of sins, and that scattering one’s ashes in the river after death can lead to the soul’s liberation (Moksha). However, the Ganges is also one of the most polluted rivers in India—its waters are tainted by domestic sewage, industrial waste, human remains, and religious offerings.
The future of the world can only exist in a civilized India.