People often compare India with China. Reason being both of them are huge countries, diverse, both developing, more or less same challenges, they are competing in many sectors and required same resources, both countries have a glorious histories and oldest civilization. When people see these points they start comparing the two, and often end with statements "India is following the path of China, and can be the next china in coming decade."
Given the similarities like huge demographic dividend, dependence on Himalayan rivers, petroleum deficient countries dependent on middle east and hence Indian Ocean, there are more subtle points which are hard to visualize and hence the contemplation of India as China is not fair. If one tries to see the holistic view than the picture is quite different.
Difference! yes. Difference in priorities, difference in ambitions, difference in perceptions and so the difference in socio-economical structure of the countries. This eventually leads to different political system and its all about system that we follow. The ideologies govern our path, rest of the things are more or less formalities.
China is a communist country and its development model is based on Foreign Investment. Its economy works on huge imports and a great manufacturing sector. And for that purpose they have under valued their currency Renminbi. Low valued currency makes the labor cheap in China and huge export. They have developed a sound infrastructure (A world model) in transport like Bullet trains, Road connectivity and advanced sea ports.
Communist government with centralized power gives it easy to go for hard decisions. Decision of land acquisition, decisions of huge investment, decisions like 1 child policy, decision like attacking people by tanks and guns on Tinanmen square in Beijing, a country that had border dispute with all 14 neighboring countries. A country where there even media is controlled by government.
India is different, the biggest and a vibrant democracy. Decisions cant move an inch without public approval. India has its own private sector and better than china in service sector. Indian engineers in IT are leading the biggest giants companies of the world. Silicon valley works because of these engineers coming from IITs and other institutes.
Its unfair to compare India and China because India's priority is
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