‘This is not about sweatshops anymore’: China’s silent factories show how far India lags

China’s factories no longer need lights. That’s not a metaphor. Western executives visiting Chinese industrial zones now describe “dark factories” where robots work around the clock without a single human on the floor — a chilling sign of just how far ahead China has moved in manufacturing dominance.

In a post that’s sparked wide conversation, Devina Mehra, Founder and CMD of First Global, warns that China has leapfrogged the rest of the world not through cheap labour or subsidies, but through control — of raw materials, of technology, and of fully automated production.

Quoting top Western executives, Mehra writes: “You’re walking alongside this conveyor, and after about 800, 900 metres, a truck drives out. There are no people — everything is robotic.”

Others speak of “dark factories,” so fully automated that they don’t require lighting. The machines never stop. The innovation never slows. And the scale is staggering.

Data from the International Federation of Robotics backs this up. Between 2014 and 2024, China’s deployment of industrial robots surged from 189,000 to over two million. That transformation marks not just automation but an industrial reinvention.

In stark contrast, India — which once aimed to become a global manufacturing hub — has seen its manufacturing share of GDP fall from 17.5 percent to 12–13 percent over the same period.

“This is not about sweatshops anymore,” Mehra writes. “China’s competitiveness has shifted to a workforce of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad.”

The implications are geopolitical as much as economic. China now dominates key supply chains not just in goods, but in the technologies that shape the next era of global production.

And while the West scrambles to “de-risk” its China exposure, and India talks of replacing Chinese capacity, the ground reality is more sobering. China isn’t just ahead — it’s operating in a different industrial dimension.