> We’ve tapped out our services potential. We now need large scale manufacturing.

Most "first world" economies are dominated by services, so I would be surprised if India has topped out in services. Do more of the high-level stuff, like design and independent, research and development. "Grunt" work, like churning out code generates, a certain level of wealth. The high-level stuff generates even more. As a crude measure, until India is winning 1.4/7.8 = 18% of Nobel prizes it has untapped potential. (This is not intended as disparagement of India's track record but to highlight the potential for India.)

In my mind the real value of a strong manufacturing industry is that it drives the development of high-level services associated with manufacturing (robotics, materials, science, ...). I'd rather have small highly developed manufacturing sector than a large "low-tech" manufacturing sector.

Shrinking globalism has a lot of causes so I don't want to overstate the case here, but one big part of the drive to pull back from it is the PRC's own currency manipulation and leveraging of its manufacturing bottleneck for geostrategic aims. They have themselves to blame partly.

But really, their demographic precipice is what's going to stall them out. I hope their political system is functional enough to let it transition into something that can continue functioning after the end of a turbo-growth economy without collapsing into a Putin-esque kleptocracy or go the way of 20th century Argentina with constant coups and general political chaos.

PRC more insulated against deglobalization than most. Despite trope, PRC is relatively less trade dependant vs OECD/G20 tier countries. It's close to US and JP where internal market is enough to generate growth and development. Meanwhile PRC exports is increasing, especially up value chain in intermediate goods, and among emerging markets. Actual risk of trade disruption with wealthy LIO block is also overstated IMO, first it's ~10% of PRC's GDP. Impact from countries who are serious (so far surprisingly little) about subtantially reducing trade, friendshoring or PRC+1 models are a fraction of that. The really rough patch are US tech blockades that inhibits PRC's ability to upgrade internally, but if overcome, huge boost to development. All of which is to say, PRC exposure to deglobalization is smaller than most think. While reality is PRC so far is inserting herself more and more into global trade despite some efforts to balkanize.

To stay on topic of India (but applies to many countries), PRC / Asian Tiger model of export driven growth model via light industries to generate surplus to upgrade capital is going to be increasingly difficult and expensive. Era of high western consumption (low interest, debt driven etc) and cheap commodities is being tapped out for short/medium term. The TLDR is PRC extracted as much benefit as it can from globalism under relatively ideal conditions while those that did not are going to have a much harder time trying to replicate similar feat. Especially India, because let's be real, west is not going to repeat the PRC "mistake" with India again, especially when India is difficult to geographically contain.