Continuing your thoughts on why China has forged ahead of India and the key
differences between the two nations...
Despite all the achievements in the high-tech industry, by and large, India is stranded in the past. India's airports are decades old and crumbling.
There are hardly any new expressways. India has grudgingly begun allowing foreign investment since 1991, a full 13 years after China opened its economy. True, the average Indian is better off than before the reforms
began but not by nearly as much as the average Chinese.
But India and China are opposites. They are as opposite as Gandhi and Mao. Their political systems are very different; China is authoritarian, India democratic. Though India has embraced capitalism in recent years, it is often anti-business, while Communist China is usually pro-business.
Think of how each country looks and sounds: India is chaotic! It is a riot of bright colours, a cacophonous nation with 30 languages. China seems more straightforward: the national language is Mandarin Chinese. And -- no doubt about it, the Communist Party runs the country.
And the journeys of the two countries have been very different: the Chinese journey has moved much faster since economic reforms began in 1978. By that I mean the government has set a goal of economic growth and has put in place a number of policies that put economic growth first. And that has worked: The government has spent billions and billions on infrastructure development. It has built roads, highways, airports and ports. This is much admired around the world.
China has built roads and dams and factories at any cost, even if it meant demolishing neighborhood after neighborhood. There is a human cost, human pain, but at the same time, that relentless focus on economic development
has helped lift hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty.
One time, I visited a new factory next to an ancient village, and I asked the people, 'It looks like this factory is ready to expand. Where will it expand?' The people answered, 'Right there!' And they pointed to the
village.
'What will happen to all the people living there?' I asked. The answer I got is what already happened to the people in other villages where they had to make room for a factory. They tell me that the people in that village moved; the government built some new apartments that housed the people. I tell them that the villagers must have had to move far from where they were used to living, and they may not have wanted to.
Well then, they answer, those people did not a choice. The Chinese government has been accused of being callous which it often indeed is. But then people suffered in China for decades and centuries and nothing good really came out of it. It was a nation of very poor peasants till the economic changes began mounting up in the last 30 years.
The Chinese government is doing this to create the greatest number of jobs for the greatest number of people. The Chinese have few rights now, but they see it as an improvement because they used to have even fewer rights, and they were
poorer too.
Photograph: Construction workers at the site of a new subway station in Shanghai. The work is part of a new transport network to help improve the city's infrastructure before the 2010 Expo in Shanghai. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: The age of Chinese MNCs is here
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