These stories about India and China always remind me of the conversations I used to have as a college student with a post-doctoral fellow in chemistry with whom I worked.
He was an Indian guy, the first Indian I got to know well; although several of my TAs were from India, I wasn’t on any sort of social footing with them. This was when I was about 19 years old, and had very little knowledge about politics.
This would have been in 1974, so the Viet Nam was on its last legs, and the Cold War was in full swing.
Anyway, this Indian postdoc would have long conversations with me about politics. Mostly what he wanted to talk about was America. About how wrong it was for America to throw its weight around all over the world, and how awful the arms race was. In his view, it was pretty much all the fault of America. If only the United States did not insist on being a nuclear superpower, the other countries of the world - including the USSR - wouldn’t feel the need to keep up with us. It was just the terrible competitive spirit of mankind that was endangering life on Earth, and the United States was the main reason this competitive spirit had been unleashed.
Now its 40+ years later, and India has the technology and the economic strength to compete, and guess what? No one can stop them.
Of course back then India was very much socialist.
I had been reading on the Indian independence movements. In its earlier days, it appears that they were looking for more of a market economy. When India gained independence, Britain had foisted a socialistic mindset on them - Ghandhi and Nehru were socialistic.
Now it has changed, with Narendra Modi pledging a “Thatcherite Revolution”. Yes, as in Margaret Thatcher.
India will end up being a nightmare for China.