Dhiman wrote:The difference in growth numbers at max is around 2% of GDP per year. Frankly I don't think you would be able to convince even a small minority in India for adopting the Chinese model for that extra 2% growth - not unless the government has a death wish - at least that is what history has shown.
Dhiman,
IMO the bold portion of your post above is the most important point of this thread. The rest just supports the main contention.
Market size, length of railways, car consumption and other metrices that are trotted out to show how far China has "arrived" is just a function of the fact that their economic reforms started in 1978 (more than a decade before Indian effort in 1992).
It is also a function of the fact that the Chinese have a central dictatorship which can stream roll all opposition and, like you mentioned elsewhere move 1.3 million people from the ancestral lands just because some Mandarins sitting in Beijing though up a grandiose scheme to build the world's biggest dam. It's useful to remember that this dictatorship has allowed Western firms to set up industries and use labor practices which would have got them banned in their native countries.
The net result has been the Chinese economy has growth at a very fast clip and so about a decade and a half after their reforms in 1978 they started to run at double digit growth rates which have propelled China to the No2 position.
All this has been achieved due to a development choice taken by the Chinese -
or more accurately taken by a CCP dictatorship without ever consulting the larger population via a referendum or election.
On the other hand take India. Everybody has a say in which way policy will go. As you pointed out a $3 billion nuclear power plant lies idle because a few hundred villagers think their lives are in danger. Contrast that with some history of how the wonderful Pudong area of Shanghai was turned from a village/small town into a gleaming airport and built up area. Remember the dreaded "X" sign painted on the door at the middle of the night? I'm sure none of our Chinese guests/friends who post here had that happen to them or any of their family members.
[Incidentally in India such an "X" sign painted on doors as a mark for demolition would have resulted in a mid-term election and all those "X'es" would have been transferred to the opposition party symbol in the ballot paper!
]
The point to note, as you say, despite such "super-efficiency" on the part of the CCP (please note I deliberate refrain from using the term China/Chinese), a decade after the reforms started, Indian growth is just 2 per cent lower than Chinese growth on the average yearly. And India is far more judicious user of capital than the Chinese are as I pointed out in a previous post
here.
What does the average 2 per cent lower growth vis a vis China mean? I reckon it means that if we take say $X per capita as being the marker which would indicate China has "arrived" and assumed its position as the "middle kingdom" then India would arrive at that $X per capita maybe a decade later or so, say one generation later.
However, arriving at the top is one thing. Remaining perched up there is another. Thanks to policy decisions taken by the CCP in its desperate the race to the top, it will become an ageing society with diminishing labor pool before it become really rich (one-child policy). It will have to deal with the consequences of the massive depredation of the environment. It will have to deal with a massive collection of NPAs for its financial system and finally it will have to deal with the social issue of having a population of well educated and rich people living under a dictatorship without recourse to choice. And finally it will have to deal with, thanks to its belligerent foreign policy massive geopolitical opposition.
As I told Wdros in a previous post, there's no delete button which can be pressed to make these problems go away.
India in contrast is/will grow in a more organic fashion - it will make mistakes and then correct them, govts will be voted to power with great expectations, then they will be booted out when they fail to live up to them. Politicians who deliver will be rewarded to another chance. Policy will be finally decided after many twists and turns and what comes out will be what a majority of Indians want. In short when India reaches $X it will be a nation at peace with itself.
Moreover it will still be a young nation with majority of its population at working age level.
I think what the CCP and its drones are shit scared of is simple:
It is scared of the ordinary Chinese finding out that there was another way to pull up the country by its bootstraps from the one that the CCP chose - one that was far more benign and took their POVs into consideration. In this day and age it's very hard to censor such information.
All the bluster, not only here on BRF but outside as well in places like People's Daily and other mouthpieces is precisely because of this.
I've come to realise that getting into these mine is bigger than yours contests with the Chinese here just plays into their game. And so even though I like to point out the gargantuan waste that projects like HSR represent (particularly since lower cost alternative which could prove just as efficient exist) on a more philosophical level, I'm happy that China has chose the path it has.
If it had been another India, then I think we should have really been worried due the fact that they started their liberalisation journey a decade before us and by nature the Chinese are such an industrious and intelligent race of people. I'm one with Chola on this limited point.
PS: One more thing: Heech's post about how India as a country/entity is just 100 years old while China is 2500 years old as a country should be archived and kept in the BRF hall of memorable posts! No point in saying anything more about it than just to mention that more one open's his/her mouth, the easier it is to understand the intelligence and depth of that person.