You get the sense that a lot of Americans are worried about the way China is going to surpass them as Number 1 Nation ™ in a few years. While there is some truth in this, I would personally have thought it is more likely that India is going to be the Number 1 Nation ™ yet you don’t hear much disquiet about that.
So, what are the reasons behind the differences in attitudes? And is my expectation reasonable?
If I had to guess, I’d say that it has to do with the fact that China is [on paper] communist, and is known to be friendly with North Korea, Russia, and other nations that don’t have the U.S.'s interests at heart.
India, OTOH, is a democracy (though not without its growing pains) and, aside from occasional dust-ups with Pakistan, is not known or suspected of being either a threat or a pain in the ass (to the US, that is).
And just look at the Human Rights violations in China! Whereas India is at least attempting to drag their farmers into the modern day, albeit kicking and screaming, while still retaining their culture.
I’ve always said the US should cultivate a relationship with India. In just a few more years it will be in top. You want another stabilizing influence in/near the Middle East; not just Israel? India is going to be it.
There doesn’t seem to be the same kind of interest by India of extending its influence to neighboring regions. China has been increasingly assertive in foreign, defense, and trade policies. Examples include major investment in Africa which some believe are intended to deny other countries access to raw materials; confronting other countries in Southeast Asia on claims to disputed islands and reefs; and there’s occasional gaffes like this.
To simplify a great deal, China seems more interested in challenging the US as a superpower, while India seems more content to “play both sides” to its own advantage.
There’s also the fact that China’s GDP is 3-4 times that of India.
In part it is that China has been regarded as a “traditional” ( tradition in this case reaching back to the late 1940’s ) enemy as a communist state. Whereas India is non-aligned, though it was once regarded with more suspicion than today due to their slightly cosier relationship with the now defunct USSR ( hence U.S. and Chinese support regionally for Pakistan in terms of military exports and whatnot back in the day ). Even today China is rather more assertive globally than India. Though India does seem to have always had regional aspirations, hence their interest in building up a blue water navy probably beyond what is necessary for any immediate arms race with Pakistan.
Probably not. China is second in nominal GDP, India is eleventh. China is second in PPP GDP and India is third, but the gap between second and third is large. China is the world’s largest exporter, India is nineteenth. China is the world’s second-largest importer, India is tenth. And although India’s economic growth rate is pretty robust, China’s is still faster.
So sustainability arguments aside, the Chinese economy is already both larger and growing faster than India’s.
China has the second largest economy in the world and is growing faster then India. India has the eleventh largest economy in the world and has a lower GDP then many countries whose populations are much smaller then it.
Obviously this may change at some point, but for now it looks like China will hold the “number 2 economy” spot for at least the near-future while India will be down there with the larger European countries.
So if your a US politician that feels the need to treat global economic standings as a nationalist horserace, it makes a lot more sense to point at China then India.
CHina has a vibrant, growing economy. India is still hampered by government regulations - not as much as before, but still a problem.
From what little I know, India has a very bureaucratic system. Everything needs a permit and approval, everything is regulated. Plus, democracy is an obstacle, there like here. In China, if the government decides they need to build something it gets built. The government control of the economy means cost is less of a concern, and certainly there is less of the protests to block things or politics to hamper major projects.
Another factor - they have built on the original “Made in China”, which was an expansion of “Made in Hong Kong” to satellite factories on the mainland.
Plus, China has mandated a lot of developmental factors like education and infrastructure that India is still fighting with; and China has controlled their population problem to the point where the demographic collapse in 40 years is a major problem (30% of the population will be over 65).
Since this is a matter of opinion rather than fact, let’s move this over to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
China is organized and India is chaos. Having a central dictatorship that can simply command things to be done and millions of bodies moved and infrastructure to be created whether there is immediate need or not has produced ~10% growth per year over an extended period. It is a phenomenon. Nobody is sure whether this can be continued without a gigantic smash but it has created a rich, urbanizing, industrializing, and highly educated country out of nowhere. India has aspects and pieces of that but nothing like the whole package.
China also has the second largest military and makes threatening noises at its neighbors constantly. It provokes incidents in what it claims to be its territorial waters. It supplies arms to what we consider rogue countries. It props up the corpse that is North Korea and places a stick of dynamite in its hand. India and Pakistan may in a blood feud but they aren’t menaces to an entire hemisphere.
The future always surprises us - who would have thought 20 years ago that China would have a middle class larger than the whole population of the United States - but there is no plausible scenario I can imagine that would make India a bigger competitor to us than China for the next 20 years.
Isn’t part of the issue that a large proportion of the U.S. national debt is held by China, which is not the case, so far as I am aware, with India? China thus potentially has a large amount of financial leverage over the USA that India simply does not have.
Personally, I think that the OP may be right, however, that in the longer run India’s economy may outstrip China’s. Being a democracy is an advantage in terms of stability. You get plenty of minor conflicts, but you do not get huge pressures of discontentment building up over long periods. By contrast, although it seems very stable now, it seems to me that China is unlikely to remain politically stable for all that much longer. The fact that it has an authoritarian, unrepresentative government ruling over huge numbers of very poor people might not in itself be a problem (that has been the condition of much of the world, including China itself, for centuries), but it also has growing and increasingly conspicuous levels of inequality (it is not being poor that makes you angry, its remaining poor when you see others like you getting rich), and, perhaps most destabilizing of a all, a growing middle class and especially a growing wealthy class with very little access to political power. That seems like a classic recipe for instability to me. I do not think China’s wealthy are going to take it for all that much longer, and they have a vast reservoir of the discontented poor (and even the discontented middle) to whom they can demagogue.
We’ve also been “afraid” of China and the Chinese for a while now. The Yellow Peril was our fear that Chinese, being nonthinking automatons, would come here, take our jobs (and probably our women as well. Racists are always worried about their women being taken) and that’s why they needed to be kept out. It isn’t a large leap to go from “they’re a threat here” to “they’re a threat everywhere.”
I disagree. China has bought a trillion or so in bonds. But that means we already have the money, which we pay back plus interest over a period of time. We are in control. If we stop our payments, they lose huge amounts of money.
It’s the threat of not buying bonds in the future that is the real leverage.
There is some anxiety toward India in the US, too. It is seen as the paradigmatic destination for some categories of outsourced American jobs – call centers, perhaps foremost – and so is an increasing economic competitor in that regard.
Ummm, right. Convenient fact left out of this observation: the U.S. and China have actually fought a war against each other within modern memory-- and many of the issues that led to the conflict remain deeply unresolved.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
India has shown itself to be much more kind to people with different values to the non-core group.
Muslims are treated with kid-gloves in India, whilst the Chinese government are too busy torturing uppity Tibetan monks.
Who would you want as top dog at a global-level.
India will not surpass China economically IMO because its overpopulation will always drag it down.
Chinas one child only policy is having at least some effect on its huge population.
Smaller population with the same, or rising productivity results in a higher standard of living, plus greater economic power internationally.
On the other hand, because of the one-child policy, China’s population is aging, which will be more of a problem in years to come. This is already an issue in Japan.
But due to automation, mechanisation and I.T., production will not only not remain static, but will actually rise.
The revenues from this will hopefully take care of the older generation, which they wouldn’t do if they had to be shared with “useless mouths” who would be either unemployed or on make work programmes.
The future is a lot less people working, but those that do receiving very high wages and in turn paying very high taxes.
India is a secular democracy. Has common enemy -Islamic extremism. Free press, english language widely spoken. No undisclosed military spendings. Friendly government. Not nearly there yet wrt economy for matching the US.