New Delhi, Oct. 12 -- India has become strategically vulnerable, caught between the US and China. China's capital goods production sector has grown 50 times larger than India's since the liberalization of our economy, when we abandoned policies to build Indian industries and opened our markets to imports. China's GDP is now five times larger, but that does not tell the whole story.

Despite pressure from the West to abandon its industrial policies, China continued to build depth in its industry. Until the 1980s, India's capital goods production sector was as strong as China's. Now India's service and manufacturing sectors are dependent on imports of Chinese hardware and machinery. Even the US is alarmed by the strength of China's electron...