They will never make the same mistake again. The boot will be on India's neck forever.
China opened its first commercial semiconductor foundry (note there were academic/government ones starting in the 1970's) in 2000 - SMIC. Today SMIC fabricates 14 nm chips (same level as US based Global Foundries, the 3rd largest foundry in the world) and is moving towards 7 nm within the year.
China still has its own semiconductor equipment companies including AMEC which won VLSI supplier of the year. This is a relatively "weak" area for China. But even relative weakness in this sector is still massive strength at China's scale:
China is still the 4th most productive region in semiconductor volume, below only Taiwan/SK/Japan and above North America.
Meanwhile India has a single 1990's semiconductor fab:
ISRO's 180 nm process, 200 mm wafer fab. Just for an idea of how backwards this is: this is too primitive to even build commodity ADCs or cheap embedded 8 bit microprocessors, forget smartphones.
India's semiconductor industry will never be allowed to get started.
You think China has it bad now? Wait until you see what India is going to deal with. Think Huawei is having a tough time because it only designs chips and has to 'downgrade' with SMIC at 14 nm instead of TSMC 7 nm? India is at 180 nm. Let that sink in for a second. It took SMIC 20 years to get to where it is now. Is there a single foundry breaking ground in India right now? No. India is already 20 years late, and counting.
You assume that India will be allowed to reach $10 trillion GDP -
it won't be, and it also won't be China restricting you.
I have to give it to you that this is indeed a fair and unbiased post that you have made.
You have raised very valid concerns regarding India's weakness in manufacturing technologies. Thank you for pointing this out.
I hope that India's strategic planners are aware about these problem areas and have a plan to overcome the weakness over the medium term.
In the short term, I don't see any solution other than sourcing semi conductors from favorable international suppliers.
On the other hand, India has various factors that favor it such as:
1) Service driven economy with a large supply of skilled workforce.
2) Largely young, productive population.
3) Low cost of labor.
4) Entrepreneurial culture that enables individuals to take opportunities and addresses problem areas such as the one you mentioned, when given support from the government.
5) Friendly relationships with most countries.
6) Democratic rule which is largely transparent.
7) Freedom of speech, very limited censorship if any - ease of integration with globally popular apps or websites.
8) Large population of English speaking doctors, technicians, experts in every field who can easily communicate with English speaking audiences.
9) Support from friendly countries who want to reduce dependency on PRC.
10) Support from developed countries such as Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, Israel etc who are vary of Chinese intentions and would like to see a strong counter balancing force.
11) No intention for global dominance or hemegony
At the same time, we also have some major challenges that need to be overcome to unlock our true potential.. Starting with widespread corruption that slows down infrastructure projects and rampant parallel economy which doesn't contribute to the national income.
India and China could have been great partners sharing a symbiotic relationship that balances the strengths and weaknesses of each other. However, in their arrogance the CCP made a grave strategic miscalculation in trying to bend India to its will - which has cost them a market of 1.4 billion people and contributed to the inevitable global isolation.
