The reason Deng Xiaoping opened up the economy in 1978 was not so much because he had this wonderful vision about the future, no matter what you (or the CCP) may claim now. It was because after Mao's "cultural revolution", the whole chinese economy was in shambles. China had no manufacturing, no development, no banks and even the traditional farming economy had been devastated by Mao's crazy-ass ideas. China opened up to receive loans from Japan (!!), their long time enemy - it is as if Pakistan decides to open up their economy to India in 2018 (may happen who knows?)! Back then, with no internet and no newspaper/ TV other than state controlled ones, it was not that difficult for the Chinese government to control the populations mindset. As Japanese banks and companies started investing in China and the Chinese economy recovered, USA and Europe got interested, primarily to counter the Soviet influence in China. Anyway, since the 60's it had waned significantly, due to intense d**k measurements between Khruschev and Mao and by early 80's soviet influence in China was almost gone. By the time the Soviet empire fell, China was copying soviet style political control, while pursuing western style capitalism (sugar-coated with "communism").
India was still holding onto the "non-aligned" past - a legacy of the Nehru-Gandhi family beliefs. In one way India copied western political systems, while on the other hand, following a control economy like the soviets! A study in contrast - right! Anyway, in 1992, reform came to India not because of anyones vision, but just like China, because Indian economy was in deep doo-doo. It was either open up or go bankrupt for India. So, open up we did - as much as was good for the ruling elites.
Now, make no mistakes, neither in China, nor in India we have true capitalism. In both countries what we have is a more capitalistic economy than before. In true capitalism, there would be almost no organized government. No monopolies, no oligopolies. The market will be "perfect" in terms of information and have same opportunities (to make money) for everyone. As such, this does not exist anywhere - not even in the USA. And it is a good thing too -if it did exist, we would eventually see super-powerful greedy corporations raping the societies/ nature for a few dollars more profit (closest is obviously USA nowadays).
Anyway, coming back to the point. China is economically 3 times bigger than India and has twice the millitary strength because of a historic fact - their economic crisis came 15 years before India's did and their leaders chose to open up their economy 15 years before Indian's did. India has a 15 years 8% compounded GDP growth to catch up to ... guess how much that comes to? ~300% - or three times - the difference between chinese and Indian economy.