As China uses favorable perceptions to project influence far beyond its borders, India embodies a gap between a democracy’s promise and performance.

During the Cold War, the People’s Republic of China’s closed-door economic policy with its capitalist and non-Communist neighbors was commonly known as the “Bamboo Curtain.”

Today, China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative carries no hint of the country’s insular past, radiating instead economic strength and international influence. As the tale of the two expressions shows, in the span of just a few decades, China has gone from being a poor cousin of the Soviet Union to a rival of the US for the title of the most favored world power.

This sudden bump for China’s favorability ratings, as felicitous as it may be, is likely to be seen by many Indians as a striking a blow to global perceptions of their own country given their propensity to view Beijing’s growing economic and military might as a geopolitical zero-sum game.

It may be irrelevant if such anxieties about China are justified. A rekindling of the idea of India being a “democratic laggard” can only be an added worry for a country striving within the constraints of a political system that has its own complex dynamic, to meet primarily the expectations of a billion-plus people, of whom 71.5 million live in extreme poverty.

The surge in respect for China’s leadership also comes as debate intensifies in Delhi over the outcome of next year’s national elections. Opinions are polarized between those who are convinced that Narendra Modi has a dangerously authoritarian streak and those who think the prime minister deserves a second term in order to put India’s progress in fast-forward.

Because of Modi’s policies or despite them, few countries exemplify at this moment the gap between a democracy’s promise and performance like India does.

Looking at the bright side, India’s projected 2018-19 growth rates – 7.4 percent and 7.8 percent – are above China’s 6.6 percent and 6.4 percent over the same period, underscoring the potential for continued economic expansion.

But on the downside, just a cursory reading of June’s news headlines conveys the gravity of India’s problems: high oil prices; a sharp depreciation of the rupee; distressed state banks in need of recapitalization; a souring of relations with the Seychelles and Maldives; a deepening political crisis in Indian-administered Kashmir; and the umpteenth lynching of a Muslim cattle trader by suspected Hindu cow-protection vigilantes.

By contrast, non-democratic China continues to stride confidently towards the future, something it has been doing since it began implementing market-economy reforms in 1978.

In the 10 years between 2001 and 2011, the share of middle-income Chinese jumped from three percent to 18 percent. Over the same period, the middle-class share of India’s population grew from one percent to just three percent.

Be its export of goods, electricity generation, manufacturing, internet penetration or R&D, India’s level is far behind China’s in almost every index of economic performance.

Going forward, China is expected to pull further away from India in such cutting-edge fields as artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology that Beijing hopes to dominate under President Xi Jinping’s signature Made in China 2025 initiative.

So, what prevents Indians from adopting a no-nonsense mix of autocratic rule and efficient bureaucracy as the first step on the road to global influence, instead of seeing China’s increasing strength as bad for India?

After all, a survey by the Pew Center in November 2017 found a surprisingly large number (55 percent) of Indians backed a governing system “in which a strong leader can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts, while 53 percent supported military rule.”

India was one of only four countries where half or more of the public supported governing by the military, the Pew Center survey said.

However, Indian voters’ yearning for a strong leader or military rule is clearly not matched by their enthusiasm for drastic political change.

The same Pew Center survey in which many respondents backed autocratic rule found that seven out of 10 Indians were satisfied with the way things were going in their country, the contentment being “widespread … across political affiliations, … income distributions and education levels.”

More significantly, about seven out of 10 respondents said life in India for people like them was “better than it was 50 years ago”, with only 17 percent saying “life was worse.”

The seemingly contradictory attitudes possibly reflect a risk-reward calculation of Indian voters: China’s remarkable success makes them often ponder the what-ifs of authoritarian rule in their own country, but overall, they are happy with the pace of India’s development.

They would certainly not endanger their gains and liberties in exchange for the uncertain benefits of a post-democratic system.

As a consequence, the thinking probably goes, if India comes across as a democratic laggard and China as the most favored world power, then let the elected representatives deal with it.

Arnab Neil Sengupta is an independent journalist and commentator. Follow him on Twitter @arnabnsg. Read other articles by Arnab.