The race between India and China
As I do each December, I am enjoying reading the review of the coming year produced by the “Economist”. In “The World In 2011”, it points out that, in the coming year, India might manage to grow its economy at the same rate – around 8.5% – as China for the first time since 1990.
However, India remains much poorer than China. The “Economist” states that India’s income per head would have to grow at 8% a year for 17 years to match the level that China enjoys today.
Meanwhile, as a result of the impact of China’s one-child policy, the difference between the population of the two countries – the only ones on Earth with more than a billion each – will narrow and India’s population could match that of China around 2025.
I am reminded of a conversation I had during my trip to China earlier this year.
The Shanghai Airlines flight from Dalian to Shanghai – a distance of 545 miles (875 km) – took just under one and a half hours and I spent the whole flight talking to a 29 year old Indian guy called Ashish, currently living in London and working as an engineer with the Ford Motor Company.
He does business in India and China and commented on how Indians think that they are an emergent superpower on a par with China whereas he believes that India simply does not have the infrastructure of China or the enterprise of the Chinese.