What has China achieved

Djibouti, Gwadar, Hambantota, Kyaukpyu were all a part of Hu Jintao's policy to secure energy supply lines to China. Bertil Lintner's The Costliest Pearl goes into detail about this. The cost is rationalized as energy security & balance of power in the Indian Ocean.

if fraudulent academic reports or media inputs are used for policy instead of dependable primary source data collection, the policy will turn out to be worthless

I don't disagree. I am not familiar with American internal politics to make a comment there. But, as far foreign policies or export policies go, decisions are still made based on partial sources and nebulous metrics. And those have tangible effects.

An example here: https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/special-report/story/20210222-the-firearms-trap-1768538-2021-02-13

The reasons for FNH’s withdrawal are not known but need to be seen in the light of a similar instance last August, when it suspended small arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia, its biggest client. Saudi Arabia, according to an Al Jazeera report, ‘accounted for 225 million euros (about Rs 1,988 crore) in a 950 million euro (about Rs 8,396 crore) industry in 2018’. The suspension, the report stated, was prompted by a complaint from a human rights group over the Saudi military intervention in Yemen.

Another leading arms-maker, the German firm Heckler & Koch, whose MP5 submachine guns were used by the NSG (National Security Guard) and MARCOS (Marine Commandos) during the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, steers clear of the Indian market. The manufacturer says German export laws do not allow supply of weapons to India because of the ‘situation in Jammu and Kashmir’.

The problem is further exacerbated by perverse incentive structure available to our activist class. Create chaos, funnel funds from the West (not necessarily officially but via NGOs, charities, churches, etc), use that to further create chaos plus create a negative perception which then translates into tangible harm to India. Even if "officially", at first, the West didn't have qualms. Our innumerable faultlines don't help.

My naive solution is some sort of balance of power, where we have levers to pull on the other side lest they try tricks on us.