Yesterday, Thomas Friedman compared India and China.
If India and China were both highways, the Chinese highway would be a six-lane, perfectly paved road, but with a huge speed bump off in the distance labeled "Political reform: how in the world do we get from Communism to a more open society?" […] India, by contrast, is like a highway full of potholes, with no sidewalks and half the streetlamps broken. But off in the distance, the road seems to smooth out, and if it does, this country will be a dynamo.
There is a better way to make the comparison:
China is to India as Wal-Mart is to Target
I apologize to 2.4 billion people so characterized and to TBSA readers for this violent insult to their intelligence. But as long as the NYT is trading in dubious metaphor, surely bloggers have license equally rash and quite as ludicrous.
Here’s what I mean by the analogy. In the international economy, China is a commodity player. India’s promise lies in its control of cultural particulars. And by this I mean, India understands and participates in the culture of the First World West in ways China does not.
As long as the world wants its merchants to "pile em high and sell em cheap," China will flourish as Wal-Mart does. But as Virginia Postrel’s vision of the marketplace comes to pass, and all consumer goods begin to add value and win share by embracing design intelligence, India will flourish as Target has.
India has a large intellectual and creative class. Many of these people are worldly in ways the chattering classes of the West are not. More than that, India is its own intellectual challenge, a culture that knows a thing or two about diversity and discontinuity. Moreover, India has been drawing on the intellectual and educational resources of the West for several hundred years. (What’s theirs is theirs, what’s ours is theirs.)
There are lots of smaller questions: 1) Has India borrowed from the English that disdain for the marketplace that keeps some smart people out of the game? 2) Clearly, India has its own traditions of world refusal. Are these active? 3) Do the educational institutions of India encourage creativity and in what domains do they encourage it? I have a feeling that there is a bias for hard science over interpretive approaches every bit as ferocious as the Western one once was. Indias "cultural creatives," to use Richard Florida’s term, are being shaped by many factors.
Mao’s cultural revolution was vastly destructive of intellectual talent, ideas, and worldliness. Clearly, these stocks of knowledge and personnel are coming back. (Sometimes, literally in the person of fully Westernized members of the "overseas" community.) And some part of the contest between China and India will turn on whether the former can recover cultural sophistication faster than the latter can create the infrastructure that Friedman finds so lacking.
Caveat lector
I am not a student of India or China. I have been to China five times over the last 15 years, traveling widely, doing commercial research and detailed interviews in home, talking to people of modest means, and generally speaking, not much education. I have been to India twice over the last 8 years, to Mumbai and New Delhi only. Again, I was doing commercial research and interviewing people of modest means and limited education. While I know lots of South Asians who are intellectuals and cultural creatives, all of them have been resident in Canada or the US for many years. In sum, the argument above is pretty much pure surmise.
References
Friedman, Thomas L. 2005. Bangalore: Hot and Hotter. New York Times. June 8, 2005.
Florida, Richard. 2002. The rise of the creative class. Washington Monthly. May.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0205.florida.html
Postrel, Virginia. 2003. The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness. New York: HarperCollins.
Steve Portigal pointed me to your blog, another post actually, but this one caught my eye, very naturally. My attempt at your three questions,
1) Has India borrowed from the English that disdain for the marketplace that keeps some smart people out of the game?
I’m not clear what you are asking here w.r.t. keeping some smart people out of the game? That is, from what context? Smart people who may not get educational or financial opportunities? that is a function of a highly competitive environment where you’re automatically being tested against a million others who want the same piece of the pie.
2) Clearly, India has its own traditions of world refusal. Are these active?
Some are, some aren’t. Non alignment and the socialist thought that dominated much of India’s early years has naturally been damped down by the rewards offered by capitalism and aligning with the most profitable markets. Still that history has made it a lot more self sufficient than other post colonial nations.
3) Do the educational institutions of India encourage creativity and in what domains do they encourage it?
I’d say, having completed my undergraduate degree in engineering in Bangalore after graduating from an american high school, and continuing on to graduate study in product design in India, that the indian educational system has a range of extremes like any other educated nation – excellent world class institutions to village schools under the nearest tree. And if creativity can be renamed resourcefulness, then yes, the educational system teaches us how to be resourceful. But no, there is no luxury in that system, which consists competing for every job with thousands of as qualified people (due to the sheer population of the country) of taking liberal arts degrees in the classics, or exploring the arts. The system is played, the years most valuable careers are taken into consideration and the appropriate qualifications sought after to maximise lifetime revenue and potential. You have little choice, few electives and small room to maneuvre. Yet, we persevere.
Friedman is probably over the top in his assessment here. India does have potential. It has had potential for centuries. What China does not have is a democracy that lets people be a participant. While India dithers, China just bulldozes ahead.
About Indian people, yes, the school system is more rigour oriented than creativity oriented. But the system makes people more resourceful as Niti pointed out. This translates into creativity. Yes, on an average Indians are more worldly wise and aware than others.
It is at our leadership level that we, as a nation, have been screwed (with honourable exceptions) and unless that is addressed, China will be ahead of India.
Niti Bhan, thanks! I was thinking about that long standing English disdain for the marketplace, the one that caused them to regard selling, manual labor, certain kinds of enterprise as vulgar, coarse, common…etc, the one that caused people who had made their bundle to get out of the marketplace as soon as possible and to take up the affections of the country gentleman. (This idea took root in the colony from which I come (Canada) in a very big way and elements of it survived the Thatcher revolution.) I wondered if this might be true in India.
Thanks very much for the clarifications on the issues of world refusal and creativity. Most illuminating! Thanks, Grant
Neelakantan, I agree entirely, it is unwise to separate resourcefulness and creativity. some of the most creative people I have ever worked with are engineers. It actually helps to have some intellectual subroutines in place when creativity is called for. Thanks for thoughts on dithering and leadership. Best, Grant
Another thing India may profit from is a greater reservoir of goodwill in at least some of the West. When I shop for the kind of inexpensive goods I can afford I check the labels for country of origin. It is much harder to “buy American” then the trade jingos would like, but at least I can buy my $3.00 T-shirt or $10.00 toaster from a country that doesn’t toss freedom activists into laogai, when it doesn’t just kill them.
Grant,
Ah, yes that disdain 🙂 “cit” vs “gentry” and being “shop soiled” in the original sense. I would hazard a guess that it does indeed exist, but along caste rather than class lines. For example, my hereditary caste is that of a “bania”, the vsya or merchant and being in service, working for a paycheck, is disdained in our community. While there are those, from the brahmin, priestly or scholarly caste, who look down upon us for this very reason, in almost a “Shylockian” way. I generalize very broadly of course, but have across this perception personally so it’s a subjective opinion.
Niti
Kevin,
Very true. Freedom of speech, democracy and rights are at least words not banned from any Indian blogs ore websites 🙂
Niti
Kevin, Good point, though it interests me how few North American consumer protest the democracy issue with their purchases. Thanks. Grant
Niti, Interesting and this is a robust idea, isnt it. Still active in Canada, where it is still much, much better to be a lawyer than an entrepreneur, despite the fact that lawyers are mostly just directing traffic. It is precisely this remove from vulgar commerce that makes them laudible. This and the fact that they are attendants to the temple of the law (and as everyone knows Canadians are so law abiding as to make the Swiss look like fire breathing anarchists.) In sum, my country hasnt a hope of surviving the economic and cultural dynamism we have to look forward to. How about India? Thanks. Grant
Grant,
Yes, it is a robust idea, since much of my exposure to it in the early days was from my teenage addiction to Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances 😛 Interesting about Canada though. I wasn’t aware that it was so prevalent as to be a concern regarding Canada’s economic future. I’ve read widely divergent opinions on Canada’s approach to globalism and multiculturalism. I’ll be in Toronto next week and we’ll see how that goes.
With respect to India, I don’t think that vulgar commerce is going to get in the way, as neelakantan says, it’s more to do with politics. India, very naturally, wants and desires to be an economic powerhouse, now whether she will become one remains to be seen. Her continued struggle rejecting “western mores corrupting our youth” yet needing foreign exchange and industry will hamper her progress more than anything else. I’ve posted an excellent article written by Amit Varma on India’s liberalization on my blog recently, and find that his viewpoint does much to articulate the problems faced by her.
1) Has India borrowed from the English that disdain for the marketplace that keeps some smart people out of the game?
I was trying to answer that question in the link below. while trying to learn more about Indian society I stumbled upon your nice blog.
link of my post
http://sun-bin.blogspot.com/2005/08/china-vs-india-and-muslim-world.html
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India is obviously doing very well in BPO and other services. I will not be drawn into this meaningless India vs China debate. Both will do well in the years to come.
The problem I have is the outdated, complacent view of China as a low-margin, passive supplier to Walmart or as a lawless pirate of Western intellectual properties.
That is not only ignorant, it is downright dangerous. There is an innovative side of China, one which is fast making China a world-class innovator in telecom, solar energy and internet software-as-services. Think of China not as Walmart, but as Toyota, Samsung and Google in the making.
The future Chinese threat, or opportunity, depending on your perspective, derives from the fact that China is now bubbling with entrepreneural startups getting funded by local and Silicon Valley VCs.
Most will fail, but world class enterprises will emerge and we should be well-aware of the challenges to come. On a personal note, my startup company has recently opened an office in Shenzen and we are finding first-rate engineering talent.
Check out some of the remarks from top VCs –
http://www.chinaventurenews.com/50226711/churchill_club_places_china_high_on_agenda.php
Dwight, thanks for your comment, next time perhaps you could read the post in question, I draw your attention to paragraph 5. Thanks, Grant
If you guys are talking about creative ideas, thinking process..look at number of Indians in this discussion versus the number of Chinese. Baidu?
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Freedom of speech, democracy and rights are at least words not banned from any Indian blogs ore websites 🙂
Nothing but empty words… India’s corruption is HIGHER than China’s. India has a female literacy rate under 40%, while China’s female literacy rate is over 90%. India’s child malnutrition rate is over 40%, while China’s is under 15%. There are 400 million cell phone users in China, compared with 48 million in India.
And to the above poster’s idiotic statement, Chinese people have Chinese as an official language, that’s why they aren’t discussing with you, they are busy in Chinese forums. Indians don’t even have a standardized language to communicate in. The Chinese have 4x the number of internet users than India.
Hello,
With regard to , Chinese people have Chinese as an official language, that’s why they aren’t discussing with you, they are busy in Chinese forums
We have not only a Official Language in which atleaast half of our folks can communicate, but also have the depth to withstand and grow with multiple languages But the point is that most of us know how to communicate with the rest of the world in a language it understands.
Corruption is everywhere, its exposed here, maybe Unexposed there. Regarding other Statistics you have posted, It doestn take a Rocket Scientist to figure out that a Democratic Country has a higher chance of giving out a correct figure, then one given by a Single Authority which has the resources necessary to stamp out any other opposing viewpoint.
Cheers
Anyone who thinks India is more “innovative” than China should go read the Knowledge Assessment Methodology Test done by World bank. According to World Bank, China scores 4.74 in Innovative Index, while India scores only 3.72. And the gap between China and India is also widening.
Go to http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/WBI/WBIPROGRAMS/KFDLP/EXTUNIKAM/0,,contentMDK:20589293~menuPK:1453865~pagePK:64168445~piPK:64168309~theSitePK:1414721,00.html
And go read the article http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/jul/17china.htm
Here is my response “But the point is that most of us know how to communicate with the rest of the world in a language it understands.”
Well, you do know that Mandarin is most spoken language on earth right now? True English is an international language. But there is no need to give up your culture to speak English which is exactly what Indians are doing. And China has more than enough English speaking people. You don’t need to worry about it.
Here is my response to China and India’s corruption. Ok, every Chinese knows their government is very corrupt. You dont need to worry about it.
However, if you go read the 2005 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index done by the Berlin-based organization Transparency International, India rates worse than China in Corruption Perceptions Index. Sorry, buddy, the democratic India did no better than China in corruption.
So it proves my guess that India is better at software outsourcing because of their English, not because of their education system, as World Bank Index shows.
http://newschecker.blogspot.com/
Here are a lot of articles comparing China and India based on the facts.
hi, friends
iwant to know the strategic tie between india and china in the regards of trade…..
Hi Kiran,
The reason that there’re fewer Chinese in this discussion has nothing to do with creative idea. It’s just that English is not a working language in China, not even for the educated. I myself am fluent English, sometime I read English blog, but I seldom participate in the discussion, because I have thousands of Chinese-language blog/bbs that I can join. Do you have those, say, in Hindu?
Fromshenzhen, Hindu is not a langage, its a culture. HindI is the language. Maybe you are better off in chinise bbs afterall..
Capra you are a big fucking prick.. you basiclly tell him to go fuck himself because he could not spell Hindi correctly?
Dude, come to the good old USA, nobody gives a flying rat to hindu/hindi… I myself have no idea what a hindu is.. you guys speak indian as far as I am concerned.. yeah, call me a big prick.. whatever
A great in-depth article on the comparative economic development of India and China, with lots of useful facts and statistics: http://www.unregisterednews.com/content/view/38/1/
I am Indian, studying MBA in Australia, recently visited Shanghai as part of studies. What I saw was very impressive. I wish Mumbai, New Delhi and other big cities of India would learn from it. While in Shanghai, I could feel the vibe and excitement in the people. Excited and hopeful of the future. It made me happy for the Chinese people, who like Indians, have long been seen as low standard and low value by rest of the world.
What strikes me in this blog is the negativity so imbibed in everyone. I honestly dont care if China or India is ahead of other. What interests me is how and when both countries are able to uplift the very poor and widen its middle class. What interests me is how and when China and India get their rightful place in the world.
Everyone at this blog should and must remember, barring misunderstandings of 1962 (something that was acknowledged by leadership of both countries), India and China has never fought a war in 5000 years of history. Yes, India lost that war, fair and square. China was the stronger of the two countries and it won. I have no shame in acknowledging that.
The question still remains. Why everyone in China and India has soo much venom in their heart against each other? We never had any problems with each other in the past 5000 years, so why now? Can someone answer the question?
PS: Remember, if China and India could work in harmony (I know it is practically impossible, but on if it could happen), common man from both the countries would be the winner. When we can achieve so much by working together, why fight?
The previous comment by Safal (May 23, 2007) puts the whole debate onto a much more friendly and productive platform.
If the debate remains on a friendly academic level, it is beneficial to everyone. But if it is based on the “I am better than you” mentality, it would only benefit those who are trying to foster ill will between the masses of the 2 great future powers.
As Safal mentioned, India and China had never had any problems with each other in the past 5000 years other than a relatively small conflict almost 50 years ago. So why start fostering enormosity between our peoples today.
Our priorities should be on how to learn from each other’s experiences and benefit ourselves in the process, with a focus firmly on bringing more people out of poverty.
As Deng XiaoPing once said: “it doesn’t matter if it’s a black cat or a white cat, if it catches mice, it is a good cat”
I sincerely hope the friendship between India and China planted recently by our 2 leaders would last forever!
I totally agree with bith Safal and “A Chinese Friend of India”. I am Indian, work in the US and get on much better with a Chinese colleague than many Indian colleagues. Times are ‘a changing. Corporations and individuals matter more than nations. Burgois nationalistic feelings are passe. India, China, US or Eurpoe, who cares, if you can contribute, welcome in, otherwise bad luck mate…
I agree with the last 3 speakers. And thank Safal for successfully changing the direction of the debate. But i like to correct something Safal said.
People in China don’t have “soo much venom in their heart” against Indians. I read both Chinese blogs and English blogs regularly. I have never found any chinese blogs that insult indians. And all english blogs by chinese people that insult indians are ONLY in response to insults first fired by indians against chinese. (…at least that’s the case so far)
But other than this, I agree with everything else the above 3 speakers said.
I want to add my two rupee, “India and China has never fought a war in 5000 years of history.” that’s not because of the love and respect between each other – but, Himalaya! NO Chinese army was going to cross over 2000 miles of desert and clime over Himalaya to attack India. or vise versa. Soon after oil and gasoline engine, when getting anywhere was no hinder, they took the first shot. not sure what misunderstandings of 1962 war is all about. Soviets were moving ballistic missiles to Cuba. World attention was somewhere else and the chines saw on opportunity. those were the times! 60’s. to me this is about human growth.. which system offers/works more for human expression and the pursuit of happiness?
FYI,
Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
– Chuang-Tzu (350 B.C.)
Chinese illegal migration into in the under populated northern areas of Myanmar had been an unreported process for sometime now. According to one report 30 percent of Mandalay’s population was of Chinese immigrants. Unlike ethnic Indian community, which had been languishing as second class citizens under Myanmar citizenship laws, China has managed the absorption of ethnic Chinese as citizens of Myanmar.
These matters should be sort outed.
Chinese illegal migration into in the under populated northern areas of Myanmar had been an unreported process for sometime now. According to one report 30 percent of Mandalay’s population was of Chinese immigrants. Unlike ethnic Indian community, which had been languishing as second class citizens under Myanmar citizenship laws, China has managed the absorption of ethnic Chinese as citizens of Myanmar.
These matters should be sort outed.