OP's comment is right there above mine; I haven't obscured it. The premise of OP's argument is that India is more similar to the West than is China. The conclu

OP's comment is right there above mine; I haven't obscured it. The premise of OP's argument is that India is more similar to the West than is China. The conclusion is that relative similarity will impede a future push by the West to divest from Indian manufacturing. There's a bit of a switcheroo in that argument, because the conclusion is only weakly supported by the premise. The strength of the argument depends on a comparative advantage in India-Western similarity versus Sino-Western similarity. I don't agree that India is more of a Western country than China, apart from the influence of British rule. Think about cultural norms, religious thinking, political philosophy, racial discrimination, and women's rights in India. Would you describe these aspects of India as "Western"? China is arguably a more capitalist country than India; does that mean it is more "Western"? Even if India were "more similar" to the West than China, it is so dissimilar from the West that it is totally within the realm of reason that the China manufacturing quagmire could be replaced by an equivalent India quagmire within a decade or two. Both countries are faraway, populous, third-world regional powers with nuclear weapons and territorial disputes. They are more similar to each other than either of them is to the West. There exist many third-world nations that are smaller (thus easier to influence) and closer to home (thus easier to defend in times of insecurity). If we have to invest in creating a new manufacturing hub in a place that will inevitably profit handsomely from our consumer demand, there is little sense in repeating the mistakes of the past and putting that hub in a massive Asian nation with which we have little in common.