Industrial tourism in China illustrates the state's use of tourism as an instrument of economic soft power. Discuss with reference to India's potential to develop similar industrial tourism circuits.

Industrial tourism — opening working factories, shipyards and breweries to visitors — began in China as a 1990s brand-building experiment by breweries and dairy firms, which the central government standardised in 2004 by designating 306 industrial and agricultural tourism sites [1]. It is therefore a deliberate state instrument, though its "soft power" reach is narrower than often claimed.

How the Chinese state uses it as economic power

• Brand projection: tours now centre on EVs, electronics and high-speed trains [1] — precisely the sectors under external trade scrutiny — normalising them as objects of national pride.
• Revenue and demand: Beijing alone recorded 15 million industrial tourists and 1.7 billion yuan (~US$248 million) in 2024; bookings on the platform Tongcheng rose over 36% year-on-year in summer 2026 [1].
• Skilling: stated goals include promoting STEM careers among youth, servicing the manufacturing labour pipeline [1].

Limits of the soft-power reading

• The audience is domestic — family bookings were 68% and the data source is a domestic travel platform [1]; this is internal legitimation more than external projection.
• Yield is thin: ~113 yuan (~US$16.5) per visitor [1] is day-trip spending; OECD notes ~28% of tourism value added accrues indirectly upstream rather than at the gate [5].
• A curated factory floor shows final assembly, not supply-chain conditions.

India's potential and constraints

• India's instrument, Swadesh Darshan 2.0 (57 destinations in 32 States; 42 more under Challenge Based Destination Development) [3], builds destinations, not plant access; the binding constraints are safety liability, trade secrets and private ownership, not funds. Delivery is also slow — the 2015 scheme took a decade to complete 75 of 76 projects [4].
• The stronger opening is industrial heritage — Mumbai's cotton mills and colonial railway workshops — following the model of UNESCO's Jingdezhen porcelain industry sites [2].

China's experience shows the state's real contribution was certifying tours enterprises had already created. India should similarly begin by accrediting existing PSU refinery, dairy and shipyard visits and pairing them with established circuits, with a standing safety-and-liability protocol. Done thus, industrial tourism can advance both heritage conservation and Make in India's skilling goals.