Why China got rich and India didn't

avadodin

The article feels all over the place. What should India do to beat China? Invest in education? Exterminate millions of its own (undereducated) population in meaningless wars and poorly–planned public works? Make their women burn their bras? Switch Communism in for Hinduism and end Democracy? Other than the first, I think I'd rather bow down to China.

tecoholic

If the author is reading - China is a single party nation state, India is a union of states. Dive into the metrics of states, you will find everything from Sub-sharan Africa levels of HDI to the ones that compete with European countries.

rayiner

Getting to the bottom of this is one of the most important public policy issues in the world. When my family left Bangladesh in 1989, the country’s GDP per capita was similar to China’s and India’s. Today, India and Bangladesh are still poor countries while China has roared ahead. How can you replicate that?

abdelhousni

So many responses to answer the title

api

It’s been kind of obvious to me that China did it by copying what America was doing from the post Civil War era until we abandoned the formula in the 1970s. China calls it “iron and salt” I think. The state makes very large investments in infrastructure and helps build huge globally competitive conglomerates in strategic and bedrock industries. The state builds the “iron.” Then it allows the free market to do the “salt,” because while big state enterprise is good at doing stuff like mass steel production or the three gorges dam it’s horrible at making consumer goods or filling small niches. (The USSR tried to have the state do the iron and the salt.) America started doing this in a big way with the railroads. Then came roads, aviation, petroleum, electrification of the entire country, bringing clean water and sanitation to the whole country, huge public works projects, the interstate highway system, the space program, DARPAnet, and so on. Then we stopped doing this kind of bedrock investment, being sold on the idea that it’s not necessary. Then we lost our lead in all industries except… the ones we still do this in like aerospace.

arjie

The comment under does make sense. We have to explain Taiwan, Korea, and Japan as well. If the difference is 1950s actions then Taiwan in particular is unexplained, having diverged in 1949. Though the cotton mill productivity does challenge the idea that it’s genetics or something inherent. Interesting problem for sure.

effnorwood

more transistors

coolThingsFirst

Beside the point, why is the US in decline?

jnaina

China used an iron-fisted central authority to impose unity from above. China’s model created cohesion mostly through forced coercion and cultural flattening. “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend” provided, of course, that every flower grows in the approved direction and every school arrives at the correct answer. On the other hand, India’s progress continues to be hobbled by deep-rooted social challenges, including religious extremism, caste-based inequality, utter breakdown of civic culture, social fragmentation, linguistic chauvinism and regional rivalries. Forced order or complete chaos. Choose your pick.

JojoFatsani

It wasn’t all hugs and lollipops for India in the 70’s either. Read about Indira Ghandi and The Emergency.

nitwit005

People seem to succeed in creating narratives around this sort of thing, but if we truly understood what was going on, we should be able to predict future economic growth rates.

guardiangod

Because all the educated Indians moved to US and contributed to the American economy, versus the Chinese who get educated in America, then move back to China to work there. English is a major reason- Indians are just better at speaking English than Chinese and thrives in corporate America. Whereas mainland Chinese couldn't climb the corporate ladder and have to seek better opportunities back in China. Find me a tech executive in a Big Tech firm who is from mainland China. You can't find one. Both Lisa Su of AMD and Jensen Huang of Nvidia are Taiwanese immigrants who grew up in US in the 70s and thus speak fluent English.

0xpiguy

The article didn’t mention what I think is the single most important reason: the ability to align local governments with the central government. You can design the best policies in the world, but it’s local governments that actually implement them. The Great Chinese Famine was a prime example of this. Mao became the scapegoat, but he wasn’t as detached from reality or as blindly idealistic as many people make him out to be. His mistake was treating local governments the way he treated the military - giving them significant autonomy, making them compete and trusting the information they reported back to him. It turned out that politicians were far more corrupt than military generals. Local officials lied about food production and greatly exaggerated output figures to gain promotions. As a result, the country sold more grain than it actually had, contributing to widespread famine and millions of deaths. When Deng returned to power and began reforming the country, he famously toured China city by city to ensure that local governments understood the message and stop fk around this time. To outsiders, it may seem that China can move quickly simply because the central government holds a great deal of power. That is certainly true compared with many other systems of governance. However, what really enables rapid policy implementation is the alignment between the central and local governments. Without that alignment, you would see the central government issue one policy but local government adds lots of red tapes and nothing really gets done in the end

dartharva

There is no singular decisive answer. Sure, you can chalk all of it up to "wrong" policy, but peel the layers a bit and explore the causes behind them and you'll see an endless chain of cause-and-effect covering more factors than all schools of academia can feasibly cover.

h4kunamata

OP sure didn't check the call center owners scamming the entire globe lmao India is scamming everybody, and getting very rich at it.

ninjagoo

This article seems to completely miss the significant compounding effect of real growth over 13 years. China liberalized their economy in the 70s: 1976 Mao dies -> Cultural revolution ends -> 1978 Deng Xiaoping launches 'Reform & Opening Up'. India liberalized their economy in the 90s: 1991 Rao and Singh come to power -> eliminate tariffs, dismantle the License Raj. The difference is at least that of compounded growth over time. At 7% real growth, in 13 years an economy gains about 2.4x. In PPP terms, China's economy is about 2.4x India's [1]. Additional factors to consider are that China liberalized more aggressively through state directed experimentation, and India liberalized more gradually, and within a democratic legal system. Also, on the Chinese side there were periods of slowdown (1989, others), and on the Indian side the economy would have been about 20% larger but for the right-wing/fascist policies of the BJP government [2][3]. But policy failures on both sides are probably a wash, bringing us to today's gap. [1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/OEMDC/... [2] https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/... [3] https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/ill-conceived-demo...

jmclnx

I have to say I think the author makes a good point. It will be interesting to see how the current US War on education changes the country in 20 years. Will a similar but opposite article be written about the US in a few decades ?

samantp

China invested in converting people to a skilled workforce planned top down. Smart workhorses, be it workers, doctors engineers, scientists, sportspersons. Freedom from traditional norms were replaced by bondage to standardisation/regimentation to communist party leadership’s planned rule sets to scale quickly. And which is fine. India in 1947 invested in freedom of thought, democracy, and gradual donning away with archaic customs (only) wherever needed, with overall gentleness. Or should I say, this has been nothing new with India, happening since eternity. Without mega turbulence, maybe with intermediate evolution-revolutions as needed like the freedom movement till 1947. Business as usual. This is clearly an unclosed chapter at this point. Many alternative futures could work out. Say, with machines doing more and more work including that of building machines, that part hopefully will get commoditised, along with the core science and infra behind that. And innovative controlled employment of those advances for societal benefits will become the need. Grassroot level, day-to-day creativity and innovation will be the mantra. Who could tell? All analysis is in hindsight anyways. Even the current fear around India moving towards some authoritarian regimented society is nonsense. Society will not let it happen. They have tasted the blood of freedom. Often at the cost of discipline, progress, economy, basic survival. They do seem to cling hard their religion, gods, spirituality though!

vivzkestrel

"why a dictatorship got rich while a flawed democracy didnt?" FTFY