Are you actually arguing that the PRC would govern territory materially worse than the Indian Union does today? That China’s central state has demonstrated lower developmental capacity, weaker redistribution, and poorer integration of peripheral regions than India? If that is your stance, then it requires empirical support, because the comparative data point in the opposite direction.
Over the last four decades, China has eliminated extreme poverty at a national scale recognized even by multilateral institutions. It has built dense transport networks into frontier regions, universalized basic electrification, and industrialized at a speed unprecedented in modern history. Per capita infrastructure stock, manufacturing capacity, high-speed rail coverage, and energy generation all exceed India’s by large margins.
India remains characterized by deep regional inequality, persistent rural poverty, underemployment, and infrastructure gaps especially in peripheral areas such as the Northeast. State capacity for large-scale mobilization and coordinated development is structurally weaker. Growth has been significant, but uneven, and heavily mediated through private capital rather than centralized planning mechanisms.
If the question is resource distribution, China’s fiscal transfer system and central planning apparatus have demonstrated stronger equalization effects between coastal and inland regions than India’s center–state fiscal balance has achieved. If the question is infrastructure delivery, China’s record is quantitatively superior. If the question is poverty reduction, the scale difference is like that of an ant versus the sky.
You can criticize aspects of governance in both systems. But to assert that China would be a “worse central government” in developmental terms is not supported by comparative political economy.