In a month I’ll be visiting both China and India.
In the meantime I continue to be amused by the endless stream of articles comparing the rises of China and India. When heralding China as the Next Big Country becomes too trendy, the media switches sides and says China’s political system will fail it, and India’s service sector is too mighty, and thus India will be the Next Big Country. But then the pendulum swings back once again — no no, China has more people (at least until 2050), a more relentless entrepreneurial attitude, and better physical infrastructure. The NYT and Fortune are on the side of India, at the moment.
I don’t know or care which country will out-muscle the other. What I DO know is that all of us non-Indians and non-Chinese should support their economic growth. We should applaud their drive to improve their futures with important qualifications such as: poverty in India is still too rampant, the political system in China is still too oppressive, and the environment is still being screwed too much amidst all of this.
You make a really important point in mentioning the environment being at the mercy of these two countries’ economic development. Ben, I hope you get a chance to see first hand the devastation of rivers, in particular, in China and blog about it so that people understand how bad it is over there…