RABAT – What is the most reliable development path for an increasingly fragmented global economy? China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, each represent a different answer. But can other countries emulate them?

With its traditional manufacturing-first development model, China has sought to keep manufacturing’s share of gross domestic product at nearly twice the advanced-economy benchmark, whereas India has leapfrogged into a services-led growth model, eschewing a manufacturing base. Yet a side-by-side comparison based on a decade of data from the OECD’s Trade in Value-Added database is sobering. Neither approach, it seems, is a plug-and-play solution. Each contains structural weaknesses that contemporary developing countries must anticipate.

China and India entered the 2012–2022 decade at opposite extremes. China was the world’s dominant exporter of manufactured goods, with manufacturing accounting for roughly 32% of its GDP — more than twice that of advanced European economies. Services, meanwhile, accounted for 44% of GDP, an unusually small share given China’s income level. In India, by contrast, services already generated about half of GDP, owing to the country’s internationally competitive information-technology and software exports. Manufacturing, at 18% of GDP, was small and shrinking and half of India’s workforce remained in low-productivity agriculture. Public infrastructure remained underfunded and reforms were highly contested.