Tuesday, February 19, 2008

dissenting opinion on china's future prospects

feb 18th, 2008

i guess i could write this, and i wouldn't even have to charge $675 for it :-)

http://www.bharatbook.com/detail.asp?id=71618

3 comments:

truti said...

Already in the last 7 years the Chinese student (always smarter than the typical Indian student) has become articulate, speaks fluent English, and is a whole lot more measured. Talking about India and China is already like the Cornell Harvard rivalry. At the former (India) everyone talks about the rivalry, at the latter no one knows or cares about it. In another few years China will be so far ahead of India economically that all comparison will become absurd. With its matured law enforcement machinery China can introduce any artifact of "Western society", courts, property rights, etc. Responsible for the decline will of course be the Nehruvians, but standing next will be all those hardened blinkered Sinophobes of India who kept thinking "we are different" and will do it differently. All this talk about China imploding is idle chatter and silly speculation. A bunch of guys who get worked up over a movie but can't summon a 10th of that enthusiasm about female foeticide or crimes against women don't deserve any better. Rajeev, your blog used to be an acerbic but interesting read. But the gang of blowhard know nothings you have collected around you have run this site into the ground

Unknown said...

Truti,
Now where did you get the great idea that Chinese grad students are always smarter than Indian grad students. In my experience the Indian grad student was always smarter in getting jobs and was always more efficient. The Chinese grad student works 12 hrs a day in the lab yet does not produce any more work than an Indian grad student

Second,what "mature" Chinese law enforcement are you talking about? The one that harvests prisoners organs or the one that allowed thousands to be enslaved in the brick kilns. Now, indian law enforcement is pathetic but the Chinese law enforcement is no better either.

Third, the India-China comparison is mostly driven by the West. Even in India, you dont find a lot of India-China comparisons and frankly lot of Indians really do not care for comparisons. We juest want to develop.

Fourth,I posted a link on this blog sometime ago on how China's manufacturing miracle is showing signs of stalling. Many factories in China's South have closed down throwing thousands out of work. Also pollution in China is killing off all the arable land.

The purpose of all this is not China-bashing but to point out that China is not some economic superpower that we need to be awed or cowed by. Of course this does not mean that we cannot learn a few things from China.

nizhal yoddha said...

truti, this defeatist mentality ("china is so far ahead we can never catch them") is very disappointing. that is a vestige of the nehruvian stalinist school of thought, which, even before the battle, has conceded victory to the other side. nehru felt he was inferior to whites. in his specific case that was true: he was indeed inferior to most indians too. but it's not true of indians in general.

while i accept that chinese will learn english, that is neither here nor there. india's competitive advantage is not english. it is merely a crutch to get service jobs, although it is an important crutch. india's competitive advantage is far greater. i refer you to the goldman sachs paper which quotes angus maddison to show how india was the pre-eminent economic power throughout history (30% of world GDP cf. china at about 20%) until 1500 CE. i just wrote a long paper on india's competitive advantage for a spanish magazine. when they allow me to post it (i expect in a few weeks time) i will go ahead and do so. there are only three problems in india, really. 1. leadership, 2. self-confidence, 3. strategic intent. if these are taken care of, india are world-beaters. just look at how far we have come in just six or seven years. it is now india-china equal equal (which of course the chinese just hate) as opposed to india-pakistan equal equal in all forums. this is great news. i think in light manufacturing and in IPR/innovation, india can beat the pants off china, not to mention in agriculture. it is only in heavy industry that they may have a competitive advantage. of course, they are putting in huge amounts of money into education, which will pay off. whereas arjun singh and other morons are destroying any islands of educational excellence we have in india. this is a problem, along with the problems of energy and water. but i think this mentality of "chinese are so superior" is totally absurd.

as for making noise about that stupid movie, wait till your daughter has a nikah with a mohammedan who will then talaq her with four kids. the media and the govt have created an environment where "mohammedan == good, hindu == bad" is being fed to young people, especially young women. for instance, urdu = good, sanskrt = bad. mohammedan outfit -> salwar-kameez = good; hindu outfit -> sari = bad, in india. ironically the pakistanis were pretty clear about this. they said, sari = hindu outfit = banned; all women must wear salwar-kameez, which of course is the same as the outfit mohammedan men wear. also, you could say fighting over the rama setu is meaningless; fighting over the cross on the coins in meaningless; fighting over the subsidy for christists to go to israel is meaningless. so what, then, is meaningful? i think one has to fight over everything as the opposition is so merciless.

as to blowhard know-nothings, there are actually only one or two of them here. their comments are regularly and peremptorily deleted.

** goldman sachs paper = Tushar Poddar, Evi Yi, “India’s Emerging Growth Potential”, Global Economics Paper No. 152, Goldman Sachs, https://portal.gs.com
** angus maddison = Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics, OECD 2003.
** strategic intent = Gary Hamel and C K Prahalad, “Strategic Intent”, The Best of HBR 1989, Harvard Business School Press