India Vs China: Startling Economic Facts

India vs China: Startling economic facts

Is China totally leaving India in the dust? The usual impartial Martian would believe so after a quick look at the world's media. Pundits pontificate about how China is the obvious superpower and hegemon in Asia, the world's future center of all manufacturing, the largest economy in the world in 25 years. In short, the greatest economic miracle of all time. I have never quite believed all this self-serving drivel; I am one of the very few in the Indian media who thinks India stands a decent chance against China.

I have been skeptical about China partly because of circumstantial evidence: migrant Chinese men stuff themselves into cargo containers and arrive asphyxiated after a Pacific crossing; mainland Chinese prostitutes flood into Southeast

But there is also a lot of hard data that suggests China's 'miracle' looks more like a 'debacle.' I have been reading quite a few pieces recently about the hollowness of their propaganda. This means the US State Department wishes to put a little pressure on the Chinese these days: the US media (unlike its Indian counterpart) entirely toes the government line on foreign affairs. This sentiment is cropping up all over:

• a surprisingly negative survey in The Economist (June 15) titled A dragon out of puff (the magazine is the unofficial voice of NATO, and they generally like totalitarian states, so the tone is quite amazing)

• an article in the San Jose Mercury News (March 25) titled China's 'growth' is not what it seems

• several articles in Time (June 17), for example Workers' Wasteland

• a story in Newsweek (April 8 International Edition) titled 'How Much Is China Cooking Its Numbers?'

• a story in the Singapore Straits Times (March 27) titled 'Is China's Economic Growth Just a Charade?'

• an opinion piece in The Asian Wall Street Journal (February 26) titled India and China: Asia's Tortoise and Hare

• an opinion piece in The International Herald Tribune (April 2) titled 'China: the Big Four banks head towards collapse'

• an article in The Economist (March 14) titled China: How cooked are the books?

• an article in The New York Times (March 19) titled 'Factories, Fewer Workers Bring More Labor Unrest To China.'

I have also read excerpts from Gordon Chang's relentlessly pessimistic book, The Coming Collapse of China (Random House, 2001). To balance this, I read Keniichi Ohmae's Profits and Perils in China, Inc relentlessly optimistic (thanks to reader Jerome).

Chang is an