Sunday, May 10, 2009

India vs China

It is Democracy vs Communism. It is time to get back to the text books and refresh the basics and also evaluate the same wrt to India and China. It is time for the debate, "The future belongs to India, not China".

My guess is that either the debate is going to be inconclusive or there is going to be a narrow victory margin. I am not keen on the results but I am looking forward to the various perspectives and view points that the participants are going to bring to this debate. What intrigues me the most is that both these nations, with their billion plus population, have been able to "efficiently" run their economies.




3 comments:

Unknown said...

No offense, Supreeth, but I don't think it's even near a close comparison. China's 2008 GDP was $4.33 trillion while India's was $1.16 trillion. From 1960 through 1988, the two countries' GDPs were roughly the same, with both at approximately $300 billion in 1988. Since then, China's growth has dwarfed India's, and it is now almost 4x bigger. The numbers speak for themselves, and can be found at Google at http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=gdp#met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:CHN:IND

Supreeth Kini said...

Matt, thank you for your comment. I hardly get any feedback on my postings. I agree with you and India is definitely behind China by a decade but when the debate was conducted last year in London my thoughts were that point of comparison would be GDP growth as graphed here http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=gdp+growth#met=ny_gdp_mktp_kd_zg&idim=country:CHN:IND

I wasn't able to view the debate back then and the result of the it wasn't released till recently. Please see the summary here - http://www.intelligencesquared.com/iq2-video/2009/the-future-belongs-to-india,-not-china
And you are right, the motion was defeated but it took them two votes.(I was partially right in saying that there might be a narrow victory margin)

Unknown said...

Ah, it all makes sense now. The link in your original post no longer works, so I didn't realize you were referencing a debate hosted by Intelligence Squared. I'd never heard of Intelligence Square before now, so thanks for the introduction.

I'm not going to join the website to see the video, but I think it's ridiculous that the vote would be so close. I don't know much about India, and I mean no disrespect. As you know, I'm a Chinaphile, and I can get pretty vocal in China's defense.

Only time will tell. From what I understand, India is positioned to continue to have incredible growth. As long as both nations continue to do well, everyone benefits.