West ‘created’ modern China by making it factory of the world, says India’s Rahul Gandhi

The politician said the US and Europe had facilitated China’s ‘coercive production model’, and advised the West to establish a democracy-based manufacturing alternative with India

Speaking at a civil society event, Gandhi said India could not replace Chinese manufacturing, instead proposing a ‘production vision within a democratic environment’

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People on Nanjing Road in Shanghai. India has been pitching its manufacturing base as an alternative to China’s industrial behemoth. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:00pm, 9 Sep 2023

Rahul Gandhi, the Indian opposition figure looking to unseat Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the general election next year, has accused the West of “creating” modern-day China by refusing to deal with the “social conflict” of industrial-scale manufacturing.

Speaking in Brussels on Thursday, Gandhi said the United States and Europe facilitated the rise of China’s “coercive production model”, and that it would be incumbent upon them, in partnership with India, to create a democracy-based alternative in the future.

“I think what China has shown everybody is that you can manufacture within a coercive framework in the 21st century, meaning that as long as you have the PLA, you have the instruments of coercion, you can have 100,000 people sitting in a factory, who will produce telephones, shoes, microphones, tables, anything for them,” Gandhi said, referring to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military.

India’s Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi at a media briefing. Gandhi said the United States and Europe facilitated the rise of China’s “coercive production model”. Photo: AFP

The Congress Party leader said the West decided “30 or 40 years ago” that they did not want to be in the “business of production, and essentially handed over production to the Chinese”.

“Another way of putting it would be that they handed over the social conflict of production. And they said listen, you handle this problem. We don’t want to deal with the political consequences of having 20, 30, 40, 50,000 factories in Europe,” Gandhi said.

“We will happily live selling the products that you produce. We will create a credit-based economy. We will create an economy that depends on rising housing prices. And we will go away from the raw, difficult challenge of producing,” he added. “That is what has produced the Chinese model.”

He was speaking at a civil society event at the Brussels Press Club, attended by the Post.