THE RACE OF TWO ASIAN GIANTS

United Nations population survey estimated that in 2023 India will have the largest population and China will be second.
The large population does not have merit in itself unless it is well-fed and endowed with economic progress.
China has other numbers 2 rankings which may raise its standing, such as the second largest economy in the world.
This is a reminder of how two fat the two Asian giants have come since their moments of profound political change in the late 1940s.

India gained freedom, and although the violence of partition cast a bloody cloud across the landscape.
The establishment of India as a multi-party electoral democracy with free media was a foundation stone of secular politics that Nehru embodied.
China’s fate at that time was also marked by violence, but it had a very different result.
China had fought Japan from 1937 to 1945 during World War II but was then plunged into civil war between the ruling Nationalists of Chiang- Kai- Shek and the communists under Mao Zedong.

Mao's victory saw the establishment of the PRC, which leaned heavily on the Soviet Union for its economic model.
China was kept out of United Nations for another two decades and did not open diplomatic relations with the US for three.
The years of Mao’s rule saw immense domestic turmoil with events such as the Great Leap Forward of 1958-62, an experiment in self-sufficient socialism that went horrifically wrong and starved millions of farmers to death, as well as the Cultural Revolution of 1966 -76, in which China went to war with itself.
Mao’s China also, of course, went to war with India, in a border conflict in 1962 whose after-effects are still very evident today.

By the 1990s India's highly protected economy was producing limited growth, and controversial reforms under figures including P.V. Narasimha Rao opened up the economy in various ways, creating a new class of millionaires as well as increasing inequality.
In a sense, China had been there first, with an astonishing economic experiment begun in the 1970s with the blessing of Mao's ultimate successor, Deng Xiaoping.
Instead of the command economy that Mao had favoured, China's senior leader allowed the development of a market economy.
This did not follow the model pioneered by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher of removing the government as much as possible from the workings of the market.
Chinese private sector was given space to develop within a framework controlled by the party. But it worked well, China became a manufacturing hub for the world, regularly posting 10% growth rates in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Today China's per capita GDP rate is around $9000 a year as opposed to around $ 2000 for India.
There are some areas of commonality to be fair, both are nervous about climate change commitments that may hamper their growth.
Both abstained at the United Nations this year rather than condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

China’s most powerful engine for growth has been its stress on education:2.4% of GDP goes on research and development broadly defined.
In international university ranking, which mostly rates hard sciences, China has a group of institutions in the top tier, many more than India.
However, China's current political system runs the risk of losing its gain as it becomes narrower and more authoritarian.
In the last few years, technology entrepreneurs, academics, and lawyers have all become a victim of political crackdowns by the party.
Societies that suppress questioning voices find in time that their capacity to innovate is damaged.
India has a long pluralist system with a variety of voices, and the flexibility and capacity to change that such a system can provide should give both China and India pause for thought if neither wants to fall behind in the next stage of global development.

On the international stage, both countries need to think about where they can find new friends.
In the case of India, there are plenty of suitors, as the establishment of the Quad naval agreement with the US, Australia and Japan suggest.
Yet independent India has always been reluctant to become entangled in disputes beyond its borders.
The growing strength of China has become a source of alarm for India, but it is not yet obvious that New Delhi wants to accept the invitation of the US to become a full-blown ally against Beijing, nor what New Delhi's reaction would be, say to a Chinese attempt to take Taiwan in near future.
China is likewise wary of formal alliances, but that is in part because its potential partners are ambivalent ones.

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