China was more strategically useful as a potential cold war ally, as at the time, the US was still notionally at war with Vietnam and China had undergone the Sino-Soviet split, beginning a process of diplomatic cooling of relations with both Vietnam and the USSR as a result.
India was still a close economic partner of the USSR at the time and couldn't be as useful. Likewise, terf island still had its claws firmly planted there as well.
That explains why relations with China warmed, but doesn't explain American offshoring by itself. NAFTA and China joining the WTO didn't happen until after the Cold War, and that's when offshoring really ramped up.
The Chinese workforce was much more skilled than the Indian one thanks to Maoist education policies. Also Special Economic Zones
My guess is that it has something to do with India being a semi-feudal country.
Klein talks about China a bit in The Shock Doctrine. Her analysis is that:
- Deng started to pursue market liberalization and privatization (and got support from the US, IMF, World Bank).
- Protests and uprisings began demanding democratic process on policies that were causing rising prices and unemployment (e.g. Tiananmen Square).
- The CCP decided to crush the protests rather than institute democratic reforms
- The end result being that the market was opened to foreign firms wanting labour, with a huge population who were terrified to demand any labor rights at all and a government fairly encouraging of foreign corporates/capital.
Not sure how that compares to India, is there just an aspect of timing of when neoliberal reforms were first rammed through in each country?
