O.K. I grant you that the Indian proposal was no more “protectionist” than China’s incentives to foreign companies, ON THE SURFACE.
However,
on the positive side, for China, they did more in terms of infrastructive than India has managed to do;
but, on the negative side, China not only sought foreign firms to manufacture in China if they wanted product placement in China, they quite often (a) REQUIRED, MANDATED those deals to include “partnerships” with local Chinese companies, very frequently companies part-owned by a unit of the Chinese government, and (b) many of them resulted in technology transfers to the Chinese partner and many of them, (c) once they had enough technology and education from the foreign partner went into competition with the foreign partner;
those measures by China - (a), (b) and (c) were long-term “protectionist” measures.
GM itself might be chuckling at it’s success today in China but it will one day rue the day it ever believed it would last.
China’s “capitalism” is fascistic state-Capitalism and it has no intention of foreign firms success lasting longer than their usefulness to helping build their Chinese competitors.
India can adopt a different model of attractiing foreign manufacturers and do so without the long term negatives in the Chinese method, but first it needs to do as well as China in what any manufacturers need - good infrastructure in energy and transportation.
Bureaucratic tardiness aside, China has FAR more financial resources then India, #1 for having been the early bird on economic reforms and #2 because of political and economic patronage and support for the US. That doesn’t mean India hasn’t doesn’t any improvement in infrastructure.
India infrastructure development has actually seen some phenomenal growth. It only pales when compared to China. A good way to measure India’s infrastructure growth is to compare it to Pakistan, both countries started at same point. While China has the ability to throw enormous amounts of money at a problem. India never had that luxury, India is more judicious, resourceful and creative in solving basic infrastructure problems. While growth in China is entirely government driven activity, India is far more entrepreneurial.
It is true that many part of India still lack basic hygiene, water supply, electricity. etc, how ever there are also parts of India that have faster broadband then even the US. While the condition of the roads are still bad, the growth in civil aviation is likely to the among the biggest in the world.
As for your (a) (b) and (c), every single country in the world has tried to extract and benefit from the scientific and technological knowledge and experience gained by other countries....on way or another. Even the US has done that at the beginning of last century. Steam engines and rocket technology weren’t invented in the US. You are simply trying to broaden the definition of “protectionism”.
What you forget about GM is that, its a non-state entity. If it is making profits, what does it care about where it is located geographically, whether US, China or India? Anyways most of GM’s profits comes from Asia, it might as well become a Chinese company. And competition will always be there from somewhere. A lot of American companies will eventually either end up becoming practically Chinese companies or will be bought out by Chinese companies. It would actually be much easier for the Chinese to buy off an entire US company lock stock and barrel then to slowly nibble away at bits and pieces of US technology.
As for the long “term negatives of China”, I haven’t quite see anything of that sort yet. Although India might want to avoid the long term negatives of US and Europe, we ARE seeing that right now. Yes India does need good infrastructure. And some tactful measure by the government such as the one mention in the article above might not be such a bad idea. One just needs to study its effects more closely and weight the pros and cons.