Understanding India and China's success: not as straightforward as it seems- 2010-09-28

Understanding India and China's success: not as straightforward as it seems

SUBMITTED BY VAMSEE KANCHI ON TUE, 2010-09-28 09:10


Pranab Bardhan, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley presented at the World Bank last week on his new book, ‘Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: A China-India Comparative Economic Assessment.’
Examining the Indian and Chinese economies, Bardhan set about debunking commonly held views on the economic drivers in the two countries and also their relationship with the rest of the World. He offered unconventional insights, but also a cautionary note on future prospects.
Following are some of the myths Bardhan took aim at:
China is the manufacturing workshop of the World – when looked at from the lens of the value Chinese manufacturers add to a product (as opposed to assembling it), China trails behind the US and Europe. Moreover, when comparing China’s growth in value added to finished products like textiles and electronics with that of Taiwan and South Korea during the early years of their development, China is significantly behind.
The service sector led India’s growth – most people think of IT or call centers when referring to the service sector, but informal sector services made up of tiny enterprises account for 60 percent of the sector's output. In fact, IT workers account for less than 0.5 percent of the country’s total work force, said Bardhan, and so could not adequately explain its growth.
Globalization increased inequality in both countries – inequality is lower in globally integrated China than India, said Bardhan, and perhaps more revealingly, inequality is rise has been smaller in China's more globally-oriented coastal areas than in interior areas.
India can count on a soon-to-come demographic dividend – India's population is projected to peak in 2030 and bring with it a strong work force and higher savings. However, the peak will happen in the less well-governed large states of north India and will also be constrained by the poor education the country's youth receive.
China has transitioned from being a command economy to a capitalist one – yes, but ownerships structures of Chinese firms are so opaque that it’s often difficult to distinguish between state and private ownership. That said, it will be difficult for the state (if at some point it desired to do so) to dismantle the existing capitalist structure of the economy.
China’s socialist legacy is all bad – it would be a ‘travesty to deny that the earlier socialist period provided a good launching pad’ said Bardhan. Particularly because that period provided for broad-based education and health, electrification, egalitarian land redistribution and autonomy for decision-making at the town and village level.

Looking beyond these myths, however, Bardhan was most passionate about the relationship between democracy and economic development. Pitting China’s performance against success stories from democracies like Costa Rica, Botswana and India and also failures in African and other authoritarian regimes, Bardhan said ‘authoritarianism is neither necessary nor sufficient for economic development.” At the same time, Bardhan pointed out that India’s experience suggests that democracy can contribute to slow and messy decision-making, an aversion to experimentation and a propensity for waves of populism and short-sightedness.
So, being accountable to citizens said Bardhan, is the bigger concern, and both India and China have demonstrated this in their own distinct ways. China’s fiscal decentralization has been successful in providing incentives and discipline through performance-based promotions for town and village government officials for rural industrialization. Similarly, India’s fractious, pluralistic democracy has increased political awareness and self-assertion among otherwise subordinate groups while its independent judiciary, Election Commission and regulatory bodies still function with a degree of autonomy.


Comments
True, both india and china
SUBMITTED BY ANONYMOUS ON TUE, 2010-09-28 13:11.
True, both india and china are developing countries, but they are significantly different. Most of the indian stories are empty hypes but chinese are doing solid things.
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Understanding and assessing China-India performnce
SUBMITTED BY RAMCANSEE ON WED, 2010-10-06 08:40.
Calling "Most of the indian stories are empty hypes but chinese are doing solid things" seems too sweeping superficial a statement. On the face of it, if so many socio-economic intellectuals are struggling to analyse and assess the economic development trends in these to countries, is not evident that there is something significant about it?
I would also recommend a look at the edit-page middle article of Prof. Gautam Adhikari in Times of India, October 4, 2010 in this context. His summation seems fairly objective and unbiassed when he says: "Today, China is a model of apparently stable corporate authoritarianism...but is such a management model a recipe for long-term stability? When demand in the open market rises many times, when social pressures erupt because of changing demographics, when an expanding middle class wants an increasing array of choices, and when perhaps galloping inflation once again rears its head because of mistken policies or as yet unforeseen global conditions, will the model hold? India, at first glance looks a mess. Its leadership sometimes appears as incompetent as that infernal Games Organizing Committee* ...but a more dynamic set of leaders, ... a younger lot, might help .. run better. The track ahead looks promising".
Prof. Adhikari also refers to "The World Bank estimates that China's growth will slow by 2015 when India's rate will surpass it." He quotes China's Global Times: a state sponsored publication, which says that the spell of that country enjoying a demographic dividend will come to an end in 2015. In other words, India will have more productive workers of an active age than will China, which will feel a growing economic and social burden of age when India's productive will steadily rise.
We definitely are in for a long, long debate on the subject, and the last word has not yet been said.
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interesting book
SUBMITTED BY YONG WANG ON FRI, 2010-10-01 12:05.
I think it will greatly help us better understand economic development and relevant policies in general if we can have more and more serious theoretical and empirical studies on the comparison between China and India. How can we miss these two fastest growing developing countries which account for 40% of the total world population? My PhD Dissertation is on China and India's FDI and growth. I hope that I can find more people to discuss what we can learn from these two countries and how it helps us to think about similar development issues in many other developing countries.
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