Chinese media warned India against a service heavy growth model, and instead focus on manufacturing.
India should shift focus to low end manufacturing like China to take full advantage of its demographic dividend to avert an unemployment crisis, a state run Chinese daily said.
"China lifted millions of people out of poverty in the last three decades by focusing on developing its own manufacturing industry", an article in the state-run Global Times said.
"Whether India's fast pace of growth can persist depends on how quickly it realises that the feasible route to inclusive growth is not by skipping past industrialisation but by relying on the manufacturing industry to create more jobs, reduce poverty and create a middle class that can drive consumption," it said.
Global Times is published by the ruling Communist Party's media wing, People's Daily media.
"Such urgency has been raised because there is skepticism about whether India can efficiently utilise its demographic dividend - the country is set to have the world's largest working-age population by 2020," the newspaper said.
China managed to help millions out of poverty by focusing on manufacturing to help create a large middle class that also drives the demand for its products. Comparisons between the economic models of India and China are frequently made by economists to draw out the difference between manufacturing led growth and service sector led growth, the Chinese paper said.
"There has long been a myth in India that the world's fastest growing economy could skip being a manufacturing base, and move directly into a sustainable growth model relying only on services." the newspaper said calling the conception "wrong and dangerous."
Citing research reports it said the services sector absorbs only about a quarter of the labor force in India despite the fact that it accounts for more than half of GDP.