India is still not in the same league as China

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There is a large debate going on in policy circles about whether India or China will pull ahead in the coming decades. I’ve been meaning to write something comprehensive about this, but quite frankly, it’s an extensive task which will have to wait. For now, I simply give you some observations by Shankar Acharya, a former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, who says:

Let me put this bluntly: as an economy, we are simply not in China’s league. [Link]

His table summarizes the reasons why, more text from his argument follows after the fold.

To read the table, look at the last column, which indicates how far ahead China is compared to India.

                  CHINA versus INDIA
ECONOMY/SCALE
Units
Year
China
India
China to India ratio

Population

Million
2003
1288
1064
1.2

GDP (PPP)

$ billion
2003
6090
2908
2.1

Per capita GDP growth

%
1980-2004
8.2
3.7
2.2

Share of manufacturing in GDP

%
2003
39
16
2.4

Living standards

 

 

 

 

 

Per capita GNP (PPP)

$
2003
4980
2880
1.7

Life expectancy

Years
2002
71
63
1.1

Female adult literacy rate

%
2003
87
45
1.9

Under 5 mortality

Per 1000
2003
37
87
0.4

Under 5 malnutrition

%
1995-2003
12.1
45.8
0.3

Poverty ratio (% below $1 a day)

 
2001 & 2000
16.6
34.7
0.5

INFRASTRUCTURE

 

 

 

 

 

Electricity production

Billion kwh
2002
1640.5
596.5
2.7

Goods hauled (Railways)

Ton-km billions
2002
1508.7
333.2
4.5

Container traffic (ports)

Millions
2003
61.62
3.9
15.7

Air freight

Ton-km millions
2003
5650.6
580.0
9.7

Telephones (land + Mobile)

Per 1000
2003
424
71
6.0

EXTERNAL SECTOR

 

 

 

 

 

Merchandise exports

$ billion
2004
593.4
81.0
7.3

Service exports

$ billion
2004
62.4
51.3
1.2

FDI inflow

$ billion
2004
60.6
5.5
11.0

Tourist arrivals

Millions
2003
33.0
2.4
13.8

Forex reserves

$ billion
2004
614.5
135.2
4.5

Sources: World Development Indicators (2005); Institute of International Finance, RBI and CSO. 2004 data for India refer to the fiscal year 2004-05. [Link]

In the 1950s, India was significantly richer, per person, than China. But India lost that lead somewhere between 1975 and 1985, when the Indian economy was stagnating under Indira Gandhi. The license raj gave her extensive political control, since it was hard to act autonomously in any part of India without requiring some government permit. She seemed unconcerned with the fact that she was strangling the economy with red tape. By 2003, China’s economy was twice as large as that of India, and 70% larger on a per capita basis.

Much of China’s growth was powered by labour-intensive manufactured exports, which took the share of manufacturing in GDP to nearly 40 per cent, compared to a paltry 16 per cent in India. [Link]

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p>The labor intensive nature of the wealth created in China meant that it trickled down to the people, reducing poverty levels:

Other indicators of living standards were just as decisively in China’s favour by the turn of the millennium. China’s poverty ratio (as estimated by the World Bank’s dollar-a-day income criterion) was less than half India’s 35 per cent. Female adult literacy was nearly double India’s pathetic 45 per cent. Life expectancy in China was a solid 8 years higher that in India. Perhaps most telling, the rate of malnutrition in children under five years in China was only about a quarter of the shamefully high 46 per cent level in India. [Link]

<

p>Acharya argues that China is even further ahead of India in terms of domestic infrastructure, which is important since it forms the basis for future economic growth:

  • “Electricity production in China is nearly three times higher than in India.”
  • “Ton-kilometres of freight hauled on railways is about 4.5 times greater.”
  • “Air-freight ton-kilometres flown in China is nearly 10 times higher.”
  • “Container traffic shipped through ports is an astonishing 16 times more in China (admittedly inclusive of Hong Kong’s shipping prowess).” [Link]

<

p>Even in telecom, where India thinks of itself as having done well, it lags behind China:

In India we take great pride in the telecom ‘revolution’ of the past decade. Despite that, in 2003 the number of landlines and mobiles in India was only one-sixth the number in China. [Link]

<

p>Acharya believes this gap will simply continue to widen since China’s annual increases in capacity are so large:

Looking to the future, it is easier to foresee a widening of the existing economic disparities between China and India than a reduction. Just consider that in the decade between 1992 and 2002 China increased her railway freight traffic by an amount greater than India’s total rail freight in 2002.

Even more remarkable, the increase in China’s merchandise exports in each of the last three years was greater than total Indian exports for that year! At a more qualitative level, you have only to compare the hundreds of cranes deployed in adding to the thousands of gleaming skyscrapers in Shanghai with the handful dotting Mumbai’s skyline. [Link]

<

p>I’ll try to post more on the overall debate in the near future. Here are some links to explore

Via the New Economist

95 thoughts on “India is still not in the same league as China”

  1. a clarification to my above post – i ask myself when i read the post – ‘what difference will it make if this guy is right about stuff like oil or gold or genetics – i cant see this being linked to anything actionable’ … anyway.

  2. “a clarification to my above post – i ask myself when i read the post – ‘what difference will it make if this guy is right about stuff like oil or gold or genetics – i cant see this being linked to anything actionable’ … anyway.”

    I have to agree.

  3. I do not buy the “Brahmin” or “Kshatryia” or any elitism theory. It is that the upper caste have had cards decked in their favor for centuries.

    Are we going to make Abdus Salam – one of the greatest theoretical physicist a brahmin too?

    A long tradition of learning and enterprise is the key. I have to agree even the primary education in India is very limited to handful of people, and that is sad.

  5. 1) http://www.keralaiyers.com/csv_kalam.html

    “Look at the epithets: Kalam Iyer, Muslim Brahmin, Gandhian Missileman”

    2) http://www.countercurrents.org/dalit-anand080603.htm

    “Kalam’s conscious distancing himself from the Muslims – in food habits and cultural and spiritual moorings – was directly proportional to his proximity to brahminism.”

    3) http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/world04/ind-congresswin.htm

    “Her decision came after meeting the president, Abdul Kalam `Iyer’ (as he is known in Brahmin circles), on May 19.”

    4) From his autobiography: http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305892

    I was born into a middle-class Tamil family in the island town of Rameswaram in the erstwhile Madras state…I had three close friends in my childhood—Ramanadha Sastry, Aravindan, and Sivaprakasan. All these boys were from orthodox Hindu Brahmin families.

    my impression from the comments is that people were making ironical jokes. ie; the sort of jokes where if you have a scandinavian gentile who is a producer hollywood who is active in liberal politics and has an interest in the kabbalah*…would be nicknamed as “olefstein” or an “honorary jew.” the analogy is imperfect because it is possible that kalam’s ancestors were brahmins, while it is unlikely a scandinavian is of jewish ancestry, but, you seem to be taking the assertions at face value while to me contextually they are clearly making light on kalam’s personal predelictions than to his origins. that’s about it.

    • see ed begely jr. in a mighty wind for what i’m talking about.

  6. GC, India is not a meritocracy. Poor low caste people don’t have access to quality education or healthcare, generally are malnourished to point of reducing IQ, and face pervasive discrimination. Realistically most of them are not in any position to be competing with wealthier Brahmins that can afford good schools, tutoring, healthcare, and a decent diet.

    Also, South India has a much lower % of Brahmins than North India and is politically dominated by Shudras. If Indian progress were as heavily dependent on Brahmins as you imply, statistics would show North India with a vast economic lead over the South. They wouldn’t show South Indian states with higher per capita incomes, higher literacy rates, lower infant mortality, and higher rates of economic growth. They also wouldn’t show high-tech industries concentrating in South Indian cities.

    More importantly, the extremely successful Indian diaspora (UK, U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Netherlands, Trinidad, Marutius, South Africa, Singapore) is overwhelmingly non-Brahmin. So this idea that non-Brahmins can’t compete and excell isn’t supported by the data.

    the comparable lack of reservations at, say, Tsinghua

    China doesn’t have a caste system.

    Besides, the 1.3 billion Chinese are hardly a homogenous population. Stereotypes about sub-group differences are widespread among the Chinese.

    In the neighbourhood’s job agencies, employers make clear their preference for the hard-working Fujianese. Most job postings include a notation in Chinese that translates as “no north,” meaning people from northern provinces need not apply.

    People from Fujian are stereotyped as being clannish, and risk-taking enterpreneurs.

    Despite its secluded location, Fujian has had a strong academic tradition since Southern Song Dynasty. At the time, north China was occupied by the Jurchen Jin Dynasty, which caused a shift of the cultural center of China to the south, benefiting Fuzhou and other southern cities. In the Chinese Academy of Science and Chinese Academy of Engineering, there are more members from Fuzhou than from any other cities.

    The southern Chinese city of Wenzhou is a place renowned for its entrepreneurs.

    Wenzhou is the country’s biggest manufacturer of small scale goods such as lighters, spectacles and badges, which are then exported around the world.

    The factories that produce these items are owned by local private businessmen. In fact, over 95% of the local economy is based in the private sector.

    Whereas other booming cities in China have relied on foreign investment or government funding to fuel their economies, Wenzhou has done it on its own.

    If you want to do a historical comparison of China V.S. India, India compares very well to China overall.

  7. Here we are. Dalits, tribals–the genetically (sic) disadvantaged performing miraculous feats. Or they could have Brahmin stock. Maybe we all have Brahmin stock 🙂

    Heres to the future!

    26 of Bihar’s Super-30 crack IIT-JEE ABHAY MOHAN JHA

    TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2005 10:36:35 AM ]

    Citibank NRI Offer

    PATNA: The billboards and jazzy advertisements selling the great IIT dream and beckoning boys and girls to the teaching shops of Kota were not for the likes of Suresh Ram, son of a Dalit brick kiln worker in Danapur, on the outskirts of Patna.

    Nor for Ashish Chandra, a Tharu tribal boy from Maoist- infested Matiaria region in West Champaran on the Nepal border.

    Yet they learnt to dare dream and make it happen.

    They are part of an elated group of 26 Bihari boys with intellect and determination to overcome socio-economic bottlenecks and crack arguably the toughest entrance exam of the country this year.

    And, it cost their parents no money. These boys owe their success to three Sirs.

    One of the Sirs, AbhayanandÂ’s is a Jekyll & Jekyll story.

    This IPS officer heading Bihar policeÂ’s intelligence wing, special branch, has for the past few years taken on another job, teaching physics to a small batch of IIT aspirants every year.

    This one without salary. “My growing brood of successful children is payment enough,” he told TOI on Thursday. Three years ago, Abhayanand teamed up with Anand Kumar, who runs a Maths tutorial centre, and Neeraj Pratap Singh, another self-employed tutor specialising in chemistry.

    “I topped Patna University. My research papers are still published regularly but poverty prevented me from studying at Cambridge even after qualifying for it,” Anand said, adding “I decided to make poor boys live their academic dreams.”

  8. Here we are! Dalits, tribals–the genetically (sic) disadvantaged performing miraculous academic feats. Or they could have Brahmin stock. Maybe we all have Brahmin stock 🙂

    I think Andhra topped the JEE list this year–something like 900 people from the state cleared, and I’d be willing to bet that the majority were from upper farmer castes, eg. Reddys, Kapus, Kammas.

    Of course since Indians came here and cleaned up–outperforming whites and other Asians– there had to be a reason. They (the collective ‘they’) figured it out–we are super Indians, everyone else from the subcontinent a bunch of moronic apes.

    Stupid Indians will of course buy this as another reason for their colonization/degradation. Hopefully not all.

    Here’s to the future!

    26 of Bihar’s Super-30 crack IIT-JEE ABHAY MOHAN JHA

    TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2005 10:36:35 AM ]

    Citibank NRI Offer

    PATNA: The billboards and jazzy advertisements selling the great IIT dream and beckoning boys and girls to the teaching shops of Kota were not for the likes of Suresh Ram, son of a Dalit brick kiln worker in Danapur, on the outskirts of Patna.

    Nor for Ashish Chandra, a Tharu tribal boy from Maoist- infested Matiaria region in West Champaran on the Nepal border.

    Yet they learnt to dare dream and make it happen.

    They are part of an elated group of 26 Bihari boys with intellect and determination to overcome socio-economic bottlenecks and crack arguably the toughest entrance exam of the country this year.

    And, it cost their parents no money. These boys owe their success to three Sirs.

    One of the Sirs, AbhayanandÂ’s is a Jekyll & Jekyll story.

    This IPS officer heading Bihar policeÂ’s intelligence wing, special branch, has for the past few years taken on another job, teaching physics to a small batch of IIT aspirants every year.

    This one without salary. “My growing brood of successful children is payment enough,” he told TOI on Thursday. Three years ago, Abhayanand teamed up with Anand Kumar, who runs a Maths tutorial centre, and Neeraj Pratap Singh, another self-employed tutor specialising in chemistry.

    “I topped Patna University. My research papers are still published regularly but poverty prevented me from studying at Cambridge even after qualifying for it,” Anand said, adding “I decided to make poor boys live their academic dreams.”

  9. I bet the Chinese citizens aren’t as free to express their grievances against the government as people in India are. FACT: India is a democracy and China isn’t.

  10. It said that there are Lies, there are Damn Lies, and there are Statistics. I don’t mean to say that India is better than China (and I believe that China will score better in 95% of the fields), but it is evident that the author has a pro-china bias. It is evident on how he has used only the data that goes against India. For example in “Service Exports”, India is shown to stand at $51.3 billion, behind China’s $62.4 billion. But the author found it convenient to ignore that this is the data for non-IT exports only. If IT exports are included, India’s figure will cross three times the China’s figure. This clearly shows the author is biased.

  11. Statistics are great, yet can be decieving. The idea of having an unbiased author on these statistics is the same as me riding a unicorn to work. I’m not saying they are wrong, i’m just saying that it numbers can easily misconstrued to give a new meaning. there are a lot of factors which this study is not including, which is more of my concern, however the content it provides is fairly informative

  12. At the present time, India has a higher return on investment per dollar than does China.

    If India grows at 7% for the next ten years (as its been doing for the past five), its GDP will be 1.4 trillion officially, putting it where China is today. And this is exchange rate GDP…not PPP GDP

    Thanks to the license raj, there is a very large parallel black economy in India…so the offical statistics for India are definitely understated.

    China is sucking up more oil than India. It is not improbable to envisage a scenario where the US Pacific fleet, Japan India etc. have a little tussle with the Middle Kingdom over that diminsihing hydrocarbon. The road to the top aint going to be that easy.

    The US is fixated on India because, as a previous poster mentioned, they are slurping up front-line IT and pharma jobs, and potentially undermining America’s tech/pharma apprentice system.

    This is not to excuse the Indian state for its failures, of course.

  13. jayZ said:

    More importantly, the extremely successful Indian diaspora (UK, U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Netherlands, Trinidad, Marutius, South Africa, Singapore) is overwhelmingly non-Brahmin. So this idea that non-Brahmins can’t compete and excell isn’t supported by the data.

    The Asian diaspora in the UK (and Asian refers to South Asians) outproduce whites, despite endemic racism, glass ceilings, etc.

    (The Indian and overwhelmingly non-Brahmin portion of the diaspora also consistently outperform whites academically.)

    Times Online September 01, 2005

    Britain’s Asians prop up economy By Rhys Blakely, Times Online

    The British Asian community generates around 10 per cent of the country’s GDP despite making up only 2.5 per cent of the population, according to research published today.

    British Asians contribute some £103 billion a year to the economy despite many having arrived in this country “penniless, homeless and unable to speak the language”, the Institute Of Asian Professionals (IAP) said.

    The figures coincide with the publication of the first Asian Power 100 List, which recognises the most influential and successful members of the British Asian community, many of whom will attend a ceremony at the the Hilton Hotel in London this evening to mark 50 years since the migration of British Asians from the sub-continent began.

    Among the prominent business figures included in the Power 100 is Lakshmi Mittal, the founder of Mittal Steel, the world’s largest steelmaker, who was named the third richest person in the world with an estimated personal fortune of $25 billion (£13.8bn) by Fortune Magazine earlier this year.

    Also included is Lord Tom Singh, who founded New Look, the retailer, in 1969 with the help of a £5,000 loan from his parents. The group is now valued at around £700 million. Arun Sarin, the chief executive of Vodafone, the telecoms giant, is also recognised on the list, which includes no less than seven Lords, three Baronesses, a Nobel Laureate, and numerous MBEs, CBEs and OBEs.

    According to the IAP, the announcement comes at a time “when many Asians could feel that their lives, motives, and methods are under intense scrutiny”.

    Included on the list are two people in the frontline in the fight against terrorism: Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, CBE, of the Metropolitan police and Raj Joshi, Assistant Director, Policy, International Affairs, at The Crown Prosecution Service.

    Khalid Darr, the chairman of the IAP, said: “The figures are quite staggering. Many on the list arrived on these shores without a penny to their name – and they have built multi-million pound business empires.

    “Entrepreneurship, coupled with a wonderful work ethic – fuelled with a desire to better oneself – is a potent force driving the British Asian business community.

    “I believe that other sectors of the community could do worse than study our methods and resolve – and follow in our footsteps.”

    “As a snapshot of contemporary Britain, Asian Power 100 shows that Asian men and women have been taking their rightful place among the most powerful people in our country.

    “It is my wish that one day British society will be so representative – that the Asian Power 100 will be redundant. Until that time we will celebrate in style.”

  16. It’s interesting to read a few of the comments by other posters who seemed to be focused on whether India is better than China. This overweening nationalistic pride is unsurprising, yet still disappointing. With over 700 million living in rural India, and with the rural population growing at a faster rate than the urban one, I think we have more important concerns than whether India is “better” than China. Especially when one considers that the rural sector is facing some of the worst economic conditions since Independence.

    I also have serious doubts that the 34 percent poverty rate has any validity as well. Anxious to prove that the economic liberalization measures that have been introduced since 1991 have produced good results, IndiaÂ’s Planning Commission estimated that only 18 percent of the population was poor in 1999. Faced with challenges and ridicule from the international community about the accuracy of this figure, the Indian government arbitrarily increased its estimate to 34 percent. It is not very clear how the discrepancy between the two figures was reconciled. Official estimates of this kind only undermine the publicÂ’s confidence in governmentÂ’s pronouncements, as they reflect an effort to hide bad news from the world.

    The real story is even worse. According to respected economists and statisticians in India, in the year 2000, the monthly income needed for a rural individual to consume 2,400 K-calories per day is not Rs. 327 ($7.25, which was the official number given by India’s internal standards of denoting poverty–2,400 K-calories per day for an individual living in rural area, and 2,100 K-calories for an urban individual. ) but Rs. 567 ($12.60). At this income level, which amounts to $0.42 or less per day, nearly 75 percent of the rural population is poor. One can only imagine what percentage of the rural population is below the World BankÂ’s broader definition of $2(versus the $1, which is another static the WB uses and which is listed in this article) per day: probably more than 90 percent.

    I’m glad to see the IT and urban sectors of India are growing and that we have a new, young group of Indians who are getting rich off of the changes in India. I suppose it allows them to buy Western designer clothing and make-believe that India is poised to become the “greatest nation” in the world. I would like to see, however, debates that do not rotate on which country is the “world’s greatest” or the new “emerging super-power”, but which explore concepts like “the country that most cares about all of its citizens, not just the wealthy ones” or the “country who gives a fair and equal chance to all its inhabitants”.

    I’ll be most impressed with that. It is the true mark of a great nation-state.

    1. I bet the Chinese citizens aren’t as free to express their grievances against the government as people in India are. FACT: India is a democracy and China isn’t.

    That’s for sure. It will be a long time for Chinese to enjoy the same freedom as Indians are enjoying now.

    1. I doubt the data of “Service exports”. It’s impossible that China is doing better than India on this one.

    2. On the telephone one, I don’t remember what the situation is in 2003, but I just came back from China. Now it seems everybody (including the immigrant workers from rural area) in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Shenzhen has a cellphone. It seems to me the number 424 is way too conservative to describe the current situation.

    3. It’s very hard for Chinese to catch up the software industry with India. India doesn’t have to worry about this one, at least for 20 years in my opinion. There are many disadvantages on the Chinese side: 1). China lacks English speaking software engineers. 2). Probably it’s a culture thing, Chinese engineers tend to improve themself as individuals instead of work as a group. It’s hard to organize this kind of engineers. 3). China lacks the reputation in this industry. Chinese might won more world wide “programming contests” than Indians, but as a whole, their talents are not recognized world wide.

    4. Other than software industry, language is still the big advantage of India. It will be more globalized enterprises in India than that in China in the coming years.

  19. You guys are forgetting the most important thing. Money is superficial. When it comes to spiritual enlightenment (minus caste superiority complexes), there is no competition.

  20. International Mathematical Olympiad, Mexico 2005

    CHINA, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF Score P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 Final Medal CHN1 7 7 7 7 7 7 42 Gold CHN2 7 7 7 7 7 7 42 Gold CHN3 7 7 7 7 7 7 42 Gold CHN4 0 7 7 7 7 7 35 Gold CHN5 7 7 7 7 7 7 42 Gold CHN6 4 7 0 7 7 7 32 Silver TOTAL 235

    TAIWAN Score P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 Final Medal TWN1 7 7 0 1 7 2 24 Silver TWN2 7 7 7 7 7 7 42 Gold TWN3 2 1 0 7 7 1 18 Bronze TWN4 7 7 7 7 7 1 36 Gold TWN5 7 7 7 7 7 7 42 Gold TWN6 1 6 0 7 7 7 28 Silver TOTAL 190

    HONG KONG Score P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 Final Medal HKG1 0 7 7 1 0 3 18 Bronze HKG2 7 1 0 7 7 7 29 Silver HKG3 7 7 0 7 0 4 25 Silver HKG4 7 7 0 7 7 0 28 Silver HKG5 7 7 7 7 7 2 37 Gold HKG6 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
    TOTAL 138

    INDIA Score P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 Final Medal IND1 0 4 0 1 0 1 6
    IND2 7 7 0 1 7 7 29 Silver IND3 2 1 0 1 0 7 11 Honor IND4 2 1 0 7 2 1 13 Bronze IND5 2 1 0 7 1 0 11 Honor IND6 0 1 7 1 0 2 11 Honor TOTAL 81

  21. The 36th International Physics Olympiad

    Absolute Winner (for the best score):

    Gábor Halász (Hungary) and Ying-Hsuan Lin (Taiwan) (ex aequo)

    Best score in the Theoretical Competition:

    Ying-Hsuan Lin (Taiwan), Gábor Halász (Hungary), Han-Hsuan Lin (Taiwan), Hanhan Li (China), Azar Eyvazov (Azerbaijan), Ivan Erofeev (Russia) (ex aequo)

    Best score in the Experimental Competition:

    Wei Xiang Jonhatan (Singapore)

    “Einstein Centennial Prize” (for the most original solution in all the competitions), (Prize of the Presidents of the Organizing and Academic Committees)

    Mingjie Dai (China)

    ORDER FIRSTNAME LASTNAME DENOMINACION AWARD 1 Gábor Halász HUNGARY Gold 1 Ying-Hsuan Lin TAIWAN Gold 3 Han-Hsuan Lin TAIWAN Gold 4 Ruslan Akhunzyanov RUSSIAN FEDERATION Gold 4 Mingjie Dai CHINA Gold 6 Hanhan Li CHINA Gold 7 Andika Jew INDONESIA Gold 8 Evgeny Mozgunov RUSSIAN FEDERATION Gold 9 Azar Eyvazov AZERBAIJAN Gold 9 Roshan Tovrani IRAN (ISLAMIC REPUBLIC) Gold 11 Péter Kómár HUNGARY Gold 12 Piyush Srivastava INDIA Gold

  22. The 29th Annual ACM-ICPC World Finals sponsored by IBM

    2005 World Champions Shanghai Jiaotong University

    Rank Name Solved Time 1 Shanghai Jiaotong University 8 1517 2 Moscow State University 7 711 3 St Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics 7 888 4 University of Waterloo 7 1046 5 University of Wroclaw 7 1155 6 Fudan University 7 1275 7 KTH – Royal Institute of Technology 6 965 8 Norwegian University of Science & Technology 6 1054 9 Izhevsk State Technical University 6 1072 10 POLITEHNICA University Bucharest 6 1113 11 Peking University 6 1131 12 The University of Hong Kong 6 1145 …. 29 Indian Institute of Technology, Madras 4

  23. Doesn’t anybody notice the China number include Hong Kong and Taiwan

    No. Those numbers DO NOT include HK and Taiwan. If they did, China would be even more advanced than India.

    Stop glorifying India. India is not in the same league as China.

  24. I AM CAMBODIAN AND THAI. IN SOUTHEAST ASEA, PEOPLE LOOK UP CHINESE AND LOOK DOWN INDIAN. INDIAN DO HARK WORK, GUARD, LABOROR…

    Except that the religion of 90% of your population is -ahem- from India. The language your monks strive to learn is Pali – ahem – from India. That your greatest architectural monument, one of the wonders of the world, Angkor Wat, is ahem, Hindu. Now go see if you can get a green card to China.

  25. Want to know the Truth. Read the book “IQ and Wealth of Nations.” by Cambridge Ph.D. Richard Lynn and the a Professor who is the father of the Prime Minister of Finland. Richard Lynn has a new book “Race Differences in Intelligence”

    The Truth is that there is a IQ gap of 20-25 points between Indians and Chinese. East Asians in China, Japan, America, New Zealand generally have tested IQ of 105. Professor Lynn found four (4) IQ test of averages 81-82 IQ for Native Indians. This is a span of 30 plus years from all different age groups.

    Richard Lynn’s new book gives East Asians IQ-105 and native Indians IQ of 81-82.

    Granted both have been mired in socialist stagnation for the last half century, yet the gap of 20-25 points still persists.

    China has though of themselves for 5,000 as a single nations, a single nations. Indians is nations formed by the British.

    Moreover, one has to ask how could tiny United Kingdom colonize all of the Indians sub-continent. Well, the simple answer is that Indian IQ is around 81-82. It the Truth.

    Look at the 1996, 2000, 2004 summer Olympics. How many Gold medals did the India. Win.

    The answer is simple. None gold. One silver in all three Olympics. How many did China Win. Look it up at Google.

    How many Chinese in the 21s. century SMELL like a garbage dump, have their women walk around in table-cloth fashion, and wear a massive DIAPER on top of their head.

    Look at a map of of the British Empire, How did present-day Pakistan, Bangledash, India get colonize by tiny island nation, U.K. . Well, the question answers itself.

    China IQ 105. India IQ 81-82. Do a search on google. yahoo. It the Truth. Let’s not fear the Truth.

  26. The Truth is that there is a IQ gap of 20-25 points between Indians and Chinese. East Asians in China, Japan, America, New Zealand generally have tested IQ of 105. Professor Lynn found four (4) IQ test of averages 81-82 IQ for Native Indians. This is a span of 30 plus years from all different age groups.

    Unproven. Aligarh Muslims tested at 100. Indian IQ must be tested among its disparate groups before one can make any kind of generalized conclusion about its IQ. Also Hindus and Sikhs (many of whom went there as laborers, or are middle caste refugees from Uganada) are kicking the shit out of whites academically in the United Kingdom. My estimate is that Indian IQ is 95-100, with a “fat tail” at both ends.

  27. What’s Proven. What the Truth. Let the facts speak for itself.

    1.. Present-day India, Pakistan, Bangledash had to be “granted” independence by the U.K. Gandhi had to walk around in a cotton diaper to stroke to the emotions of the British to let India independent in the first place in 1947.

    Sir Winston Churchill was vehement against granting India independence. It’s the Truth. What about before 1947.. Where India? Where the Republic before 1947. Not even a nation.

    2. India with a billion people has never won a Gold medal in recent summer Olympics of 1996, 2000, 2004. Winning a Gold Medal in Olympics is something you cannot fake or lie about. How many Gold medal. Zero. Zippo. None. True.

    3. Indians have tested IQ in low 80s. about 81-82 for the last 30 years. No movement in IQ due to Time or Age. Truth is Indians is IQ 81-82. True.

    4. Read this week. Business Week Magazine. Indians per capita Income in Real Exchange terms is about $650… Six hundred fifty dollars per head per year for Indians in India. Again, not a number you can fake or make up.

    India… Indians…. 3rd. or rather 4th. world Forever. It the Truth. Accept the Truth for what it is…. the truth.

  28. Happen to read this article. It’s interesting but the data are pretty old.(i.e. 2000 ~2003). It’d be good if somebody can compile a new comparison of the 2 countries as of year 2006 or 2007.

    I really want to know if the gap is widening or narrowed down.

    Thanks. G

  29. if India is really a modern nation. it has not won a Gold medal in a summer olympic. I look it up at google.com.

    in 1996, 2000, 2004 summer Olympcis. India did not win One Gold medal. How could a billion people in three Olympics not win a single medal. this is what in china called “loose face”.

    also, I found a map of British empire, how a nation of 600 million become a colony of tiny U.K. with 60 million.

    Indians have to asked themselves how could the whole sub-continent be totally be colonize this again in China is called “loose face”. the British must be genius or Indians dummies.

    let confront the past before we look to the future.

  30. watch out china devil empire, india will be strong one day and conquer all of china. all asia should belong to india. india give buddism and kungfu, shaolim to china, and asia. the only i like is chinese girls and that is my dream to have them to be my mistress. india and america are allied, we should isolate china and force it kow tow to us. china is a devil, communist country. india is a democracy country like the us.

  31. if India is really a modern nation. it has not won a Gold medal in a summer olympic. I look it up at google.com.

    in 1996, 2000, 2004 summer Olympcis. India did not win One Gold medal. How could a billion people in three Olympics not win a single medal. this is what in china called “loose face”.

    Communist societies view sports as agitprop – a means of showing the world that there is something to their benighted authoritarianism. In its heyday, East Germany rivalled the United States in medal counts. We know now that East Germany collapsed, and we also know that for all hype about China in the western media, it has serious internal difficulties, including restive provinces that want nothing to do with the Han Chinese. If the Chinese are so smart, why are they still being ruled by a small coterie of dictators?

    1.. Present-day India, Pakistan, Bangledash had to be “granted” independence by the U.K. Gandhi had to walk around in a cotton diaper to stroke to the emotions of the British to let India independent in the first place in 1947.

    And the British Empire financed the defecits it ran in India by keeping the oh-so-intelligent Chinese high on opium. Gandhi’s asceticism, which was reflected in his dress, was a technique to emotionally connect to the masses for whom its ancient culture still resonated. Mao destroyed traditional Chinese culture and what was left of its institutions. The truth is that English-speaking Indian will not be slaves to the white man, it will be the Chinese, because at this point they know no other way. You will have psuedo-western Chinese searching for Taoism in western textbooks. You will have Southern Evangelism, the crassest of materialism, and the most laughable mimic men running around thinking they’ve “made” it.

  32. Hmmm, using IMO results as a metric for determining the ability of a nation towards a certain subject area isn’t necessarily precise, for it may reflect more of a societal concentration of interest rather than pure ability…examining the rank of many european countries (including ones which have historically been the best in history in producing technically-brilliant minds – Norway, Finland, France, Italy, etc: http://www.imocompendium.com/index.php?options=gl%7Cimotres&p=00R3l ), one sees they too pale in comparison with China, who has outdone even the U.S. and Russia in many such competitions. But does it matter? Is the monolith of American mathematics crumbling before the onslaught of Chinese research? It would seem not. Of course, time will tell in the coming decades, but the west still holds the key.

    If ‘superlative brilliance’ is what you’re after, perhaps you should check the number of referred papers per scientist (i.e. the h-index) on average between authors of Chinese and Indian Ancestry (do it per capita, and base it on papers from the US to make the info a bit more impartial.) Of course, then this would be comparing US scientists, which defeats the purpose of comparing countries in a sense.

  33. as for sports, I have 2 cents here. as a Chinese in US, I know many Indian friends. I’m very surprised to see that most Indian guys never exercise at all, Doing exercise is already a habbit for most Chinese people. Sports culture is also important to a nations’s Olympic results.

    I have been India a couple of times. Criket is almost the ony games playing in India and even that, not many people play it in a periodical basis. Withour any basis from the bottom, how can India compete with China in sports?

    Another thing most Indians lack of is mental toughness. In our comapny’s pingpong games, a Chinese can easily beat an Indian in close games.

    Of course, there’are pile of aspects India is far behind. Forget IQ difference, India can never catch up if their people keep bragging and boasting without hardworking, endurance and mental toughness.

  34. An interesting article from businessweek http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/asiatech/archives/2006/07/china_tops_indi.html

    July 18, 2006 China tops India again Bruce Einhorn ChinaÂ’s science and engineering community has been distracted the past few months by a series of scandals involving accusations of fraud and plagiarism. But the incidents, however embarrassing, donÂ’t seem to be slowing the rush of U.S. companies expanding their R&D operations in the country. For big multinationals, ChinaÂ’s low-cost talent pool, government support and huge market are what matter, and so companies are willing to invest in knowledge workers even with what could be a greater risk of wrongdoing. The latest example: last week Ruey Bin Kao, president of Motorola China, said that the U.S. telecom giant is adding another 1,000 R&D workers in China this year. (Here’s the story from the Xinhua website.) In other words, by yearend Motorola will employ 50% more R&D staff in China than a year ago.

    China’s progress is certainly making some people nervous. For some years now, many Indians have taken solace from the idea that China may be ahead in manufacturing, but can’t compare to India when it comes to R&D. Or, as Sunil Jain writes in India’s Business Standard, “Tradition has it that while China is the factory of the world, India is going to be the laboratory of the world.” But, Jain adds, a top science body in India, the Scientific Advisory Council, last week caused jitters among Indians after assessing a recent U.S. military report comparing the research output of scientists in China, India and other developing countries. Not only was India behind China in number of papers published, Jain notes, but far more Chinese research papers are landing in top Western journals. More worrisome still for the Indians – and encouraging for the Chinese – is the likelihood that the trend is going to continue: Jain writes that the World Bank’s “Knowledge Index,” a ranking that looks at a country’s scientific fundamentals including Internet and PC usage, patents, and IT adoption by local companies, also skews heavily toward China. In 1995 China scored 3.03 and now scores 4.21, he writes, but India has gone in the other direction, scoring 2.76 11 years ago and just 2.61 today. With scores like that, China can afford to suffer its share of embarrassing science scandals.

  35. Attention all chinamen, there’s no need to be jealous or feel inferior. Learn to be humble. 🙂 Isn’t that what Confucius says? 😉

    Besides, if chinese are so smart, then how come they were conquered so easily by the Japanese and other western nations? 🙂

    It must be humiliating for chinese people to be given freedom by the Russians/Americans, since 500 million chinese could not even defeat 1 million Japanese and 40,000 westerners over a 100 years on their own.

    Just like blacks after slavery in America, the chinese race simply cannot cope with freedom, dicipline, individual thinking and democracy. Just look what a mess they made during their 1912-1949 republic. Enough said.

    On a seperate note, to make a comparison of India vs china is ridiculous since they are two different countries/political systems/cultures with different approaches to life. China opened its economy in 1979, India in 1991. Comments by chinese about India shows how very little they know about their “next door” neighbour.

    It doesn’t bother me if chinese are e.g desperate to prove their worthiness to the world with the help of steroids (just like the other communist countries)while Indians don’t care.

    It’s a fact, Indians accomplish so much by doing so little in such areas as infrastructure. It is quite impressive that we have 8-10% growth with very little infrastructure development, taking away manufacturing jobs from China due to price and taking skilled jobs from the west.

    Instead, china must worry how it will offer employment/stability to its people and avoid democracy in a globalised world. Be happy for India’s success and focus on your own problems my little chinamen.

  36. Vikram

    First of all of am not a Chinamen, but I lived enough in Hong Kong and travel extensively in China. If you have traveled and lived in China you will know that you cannot compare and blame Chinese. They are Chinese and they have their own way of living, thinking and doing things.

    There is always a point in history that we cannot change but we learn form it. What do we learn from it. Chinese was invaded by Japanese – you have to go down deep to see what happen and how this will be avoided. Japanese choose the right time to attack. At that time, China was divided. There were already conflicts between the communist and democratic parties. Also the emperor was loosing its hold. It was more like a civil war within China. So just taking one point of time and comparing with slavery and freedom is plain stupid. India was also occupied by the British, does it make them slaves? “It doesn’t bother me if chinese are e.g desperate to prove their worthiness to the world with the help of steroids (just like the other communist countries) while Indians don’t care. “ Indians always have this ‘donÂ’t careÂ’ attitude. So if they do not do well in sports, economy, etc it really does not matter. Who cares? So many Indians are living in poverty – who care? The main city smell like shit – does anyone care ? Oh the Chinese did good in sports Â… ah they use steroids… ‘all of them use steroidsÂ’Â… How about Indians? Who cares? We like to brag – we can do better than Chinese. Â…but who cares if we do worst? Education: People always talk about IIT, but most IIT goes outside. There are even many of them in Hong Kong. How about retaining the ‘cream of the creamÂ’ in India? In India, who cares? China on the other hand is investing heavily in education and trying to retain their people. The Chinese universities like Tsinghua (not to mention the top universities in Hong Kong with world class research labs) are building up top research labs. Also, Chinese government does not have to guarantee employment/stability. It just create the right environment for investment. Before I also had this feeling that the government has to guarantee everything. But it is rarely the case. If you have been to Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, you will know what I mean. Chinese are building an empire and China does not have to worry how it will offer to its people and avoid democracy in a globalize world. China does not care what India think about it. Democracy is a relative term. India being the whole largest democracy is not doing any better than china. Singapore having a limited democracy is a good place to live. Even we talk about complete democracy there is only two main parties in US (either you are democratic or republic). Democracy has its own problems. “Be happy for India’s success and focus on your own problems my little chinamen.” Yes, I am happy about IndiaÂ’s success. But are they doing enough – actually I donÂ’t careÂ…because I have Indian blood.

  37. Its typically delusional of indians to even think they are in the same league as China.

    After a couple decades of liberalization and supposedly high growth rates, India still has a per capita income of around $500 a year! Thats about 50% less than that of Africa. India also compares unfavorably with Africa in malnutrition, child labor, sanitation facilities….

    The Indian subcontinent is easily the most miserably impoverished region on the planet. Thats what 6 decades of “independence”, democracy, english education etc have achieved.

    If China cooks its statistics it is to mask its actual growth. The current per capita income of China is well over 2000 dollars a year. This is based on a controlled exchange rate that is widely considered as being about 40% below what it should be. Which makes the actual nominal per capita income of China at around $3000. Or 6 times larger than India’s.

  38. the fact is this,

    India love to show off, have huge egos, and love to worship the white man. America is fixated on India? yeah maybe lou dobb from CNN. Come on I live in America and if you ask 100 American where india is, they wouldn’t be able to tell you. All the races is represented in sports and pop cultre in America except for Indian. Don’t belive me watch television over here. Yes, yes you will here about India on MSNBC or CNN, but only 5% of US’s pop actually watch the news

    When was the last time American public pay a cent to see a bollywood movie? Lets not even talk about the Olympics. Critcket? the white man gave you that sports, and American invented Baseball cause they knew any real man would never play cricket.

    Indian was jumping for joy and acting like the savior has arrived when BUsh or Bill Gates visits. Indians get gitty up if the white man pays any attention to Inida.

    Indians and the indian media is obsess and fixated on the attention of the white man. India thinks they deserve the blessing and investment form the white man. Still bitter fromt he very first day Nixon and Kissenger gave China the attention.

    Uncle Sam wants to use you to Check China and most Indian would be glad to let the white man be his master once again.

    I am nerither Indian nor Chinese, but I have close friends who are American-indo and American-Chinese

    Most chinese still have an inferior complex toewards the west but they are growing in confidence and see there destiny as a superpower Chinese don’t compare themselves to Indians they shoot for the star and competes with AMerica Europe or Japan and wants to eb the best.

    Most Indians see they destiny as better thant he chinese but want the white man to be his master and always seeking the aproval of the white man.

    Read any ariticle on any newspaper. Always bashign China and drooling over the whtie man superiority as and claiming they have a “special relationship” white man.

    Wake up my Indians friends first you have confidents in yourself not cokiness then India will be truly a nation that the worlds woudl respect.

  39. India v. China If only it was a cricket match . . .

    Chances are that if China played cricket it would probably demolish India’s overhyped yet mediocre team.

    The captain of the Australian cricket team, Ricky Ponting, is part chinese. This is perhaps the best cricket team of the modern era.

    India on the other hand, obsessed though it is with this colonial legacy, has never been a cricket powerhouse as Australia, England and West Indies have been. It even has a losing record against arch rivals Pakistan.

    In sports as in most everything else, the Indian subcontinent is at the very bottom.

  40. Anxious to prove that the economic liberalization measures that have been introduced since 1991 have produced good results, India’s Planning Commission estimated that only 18 percent of the population was poor in 1999. Faced with challenges and ridicule from the international community about the accuracy of this figure, the Indian government arbitrarily increased its estimate to 34 percent. It is not very clear how the discrepancy between the two figures was reconciled. Official estimates of this kind only undermine the public’s confidence in government’s pronouncements, as they reflect an effort to hide bad news from the world. The real story is even worse. According to respected economists and statisticians in India, in the year 2000, the monthly income needed for a rural individual to consume 2,400 K-calories per day is not Rs. 327 ($7.25, which was the official number given by India’s internal standards of denoting poverty–2,400 K-calories per day for an individual living in rural area, and 2,100 K-calories for an urban individual. ) but Rs. 567 ($12.60). At this income level, which amounts to $0.42 or less per day, nearly 75 percent of the rural population is poor. One can only imagine what percentage of the rural population is below the World Bank’s broader definition of $2(versus the $1, which is another static the WB uses and which is listed in this article) per day: probably more than 90 percent.

    Truly shameful. India totally deserves the contempt of the world. It is proof of the sheer stupidity of the indian babus that they thought they could fool the world with the LIE of 18% poverty!

    Half of indian children are starving; if thats not the worst kind of poverty, what is??

  41. gc wrote;

    re: kalam, I agree that reasonable people may disagree, but this is why I think he’s a Brahmin.

    A self-aggrandizing delusion. Since when did the fisherman caste become brahmin??

    Analysis of these data demonstrated that the upper castes have a higher affinity to Europeans than to Asians, and the upper castes are significantly more similar to Europeans than are the lower castes.

    Yet the upper castes look no different from the lower castes, and indeed find themselves lowly outcastes among non-pc europeans. The most despised people in europe are the gypsies, who supposedly originated in northwest India.

    The Brahmin roll call among top civil servants is even more impressive

    But their performance is the exact opposite of impressive, isnt it? The indian babus are among the most corrupt, incompetent and callous scoundrels in the world. So much for brahmin “impressiveness” 🙂

    the Indian contribution to software development, feted worldwide

    Who are you kidding? Name anything original in software that has come out of India? Tiny nations like Finland have made far greater contributions in IT than the code coolies that you are exalting.

    In the Hindi belt they still matter in politics, they still dominate the bureaucracy, they still possess sizeable land and economic resources.

    Yes, and the hindi belt also happens to be the most backward region of India. Coincidence?

    Isnt it noteworthy that the states with the highest number of brahmins perform the poorest?

    The chiefs of the Army and the Air Force, Gen. S. Padmanabhan and Air Chief Marshal S. Krishnaswamy, are Brahmins.

    That should scare you, when you consider the sorry reputation of brahmins in the martial spirit department 🙂

    The last time the Indian armed forces were led by a brahmin, General Kaul, in actual battle, India suffered the most humiliating defeat of the 20th century. The great brahmin warrior abandoned his troops and ran off to Delhi to nurse a sore throat!!

  42. India is a land of God. In the pass, India gave Buddhism to China. According to Chinese history, India also taught and inroduced Kungfu to China through a monk who established the first Shaolin temple in China. Nowadays, Indian scientists are spreading all over the world , from UK.. Europe to the USA…Look at big company in the world, the world are using Indian brain power and labor from IT to medicine. Let’s look how may Indian Doctor and Software Engineer from that everyday working and helping mankind.What ‘s if one day all Indian abroad go home? I think the world will be in trouble. Silicon valley in California will collapse. IT stock will go down, bankcrupcy. And how ‘s about hospital, patient will wait in line without Indian Doctor?

  43. iam an indian, living across india and travelled few countries in europe, middle east and fareast.

    at a country level we were busy competeting with pakistan, while china looked ahead and was competeting with itself.

    just take the example of india’s influence in tibet, nepal ? Look at srilanka, india had so long been funding srilanka on various fronts only to realise lately that china is setting up a harbour without much efforts and srilanka’s is buying weapons from china while india gives soft loan.

    Lets face the fact, we do not have a long term stragegy(take india’s policies – domestic & international in the last 20 years) we do not have the will to keep our nation internally under control ( take kashmir, punjab, maoists fm bihar to andhra, northeast) primiarily we should not allow such things to happen. we still go on brahmin bragging either thrashing or supporting ( brahmins contribute about 3% of the population, why such a big hue and cry?) we just allow events to control us, corrupt politicians to make their money/way. we are just lazy to do a hard work, just keen on mastrubating, the data of sucessful indians abroad, some it parks in the country, bollywood, cricket, and victory over pakistan is more than enough to keep indians day dreaming. We do not have pride as indians, try meeting an indian along with a white man with you outside india. the indian will drool at the whiteman and look at you as an intruder. (whereas a pakistani or bangladeshi may be hospitable to you as a person from the subcontinent) Our enemy is Pakistan, pakistan & pakistan the rest are friends, or potential friends or superior(we have to appease them). Take the example of surabjit in pakistani jail the hue and cry made by the media and the country for his death scentance. (this is good) but what about the indian fishermen killed by the srilankan navy?? (is any one hearing ??)

  44. Generally, East Asian cities(Tokyo,HK,Seoul,Taipei,Shanghai) are the leader in whole Asia and being dominant in almost every aspects; economy,infrastructure,languages,modernity,futurism,fashion,sports,purchasing power,luxury stuffs..etc. Please don’t East Asian cities with India(South Asia), they are too far ahead.

  45. East Asian cities+S’pore as the most powerful nation in whole Asia either in military,technology,forex,tourism….too much to mention. Besides English, Asia 3 big languages are Chi,Jap,Kor; this implies how powerful the nation are.