Chapter 6 4. India: Can it catch up with China?

When talking about the rise of China, international comparisons are persuasive, and the most meaningful international comparisons are probably the comparisons between China and India, because China and India are both populous countries with relatively similar starting points.China has a population of 1.3 billion and India has a population of 1.2 billion.New China was established in 1949 and India became independent in 1947.Both countries were poor at the time, but India was in a slightly better position than China, which had experienced decades of turmoil and war, while India was relatively stable.The two countries have taken different political paths in the past few decades. Over the past half a century, China and India have seen huge differences.From the 2010 statistics released by the World Bank and other institutions, the differences between India and China can be roughly summarized as 2, 4, 6, 10, 20 and incomparable.

2 is that China's food production is 2 times that of India, even though China has less arable land than India.The number of Internet users in China is 2.5 times that of India. 4 means that China's economic scale, total foreign trade volume, crude oil production, power generation, etc. are about four times that of India. 6 means that China's foreign exchange reserves, steel production, and the number of TV sets are about 6 times that of India, and the number of AIDS patients is 6 times lower than that of India. 10 means that the amount of foreign investment China attracts is about 10 times that of India, and the average life expectancy in China is also 10 years higher than that in India.

20 means that the number of foreign tourists attracted by China is about 20 times that of India. Incomparability means that the two countries are incomparable in terms of high-speed rail, highways, the total number of Olympic medals, the status of women, and the situation of slums. The situation in China is many times better than that in India. These are only numerical differences, and if you visit India, you may feel that the gap is even bigger.You can drive 20 hours in any direction from the center of Beijing or Shanghai, and if you add up the poverty you see along the way, it will be less than if you drive from the center of Mumbai, New Delhi, and Kolkata in India to the outside of the city. The poverty seen after driving for 2 hours.In addition, the level of corruption in India is also higher than that of China, and the environmental pollution is also more serious than China.The West always thinks that "democratic" India should surpass "undemocratic" China, but they don't know it, and they are shocked.It is not easy for India to catch up with China.

At that time, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not believe that democracy could be practiced in such a backward place as India, but today this system has stabilized in India, and most Indians have also recognized and accepted this system. In this sense, this system is a success. of.But the strength of a society's economy, culture, education level, and tradition are like a steel ruler, ruthlessly determining the quality of its political system.No matter how you look at it, India is still a fairly typical developing country, and the quality of its democratic system is not high.From my observation, India's political system is difficult to create some of the basic conditions required for modernization, such as social equality, land reform and women's emancipation.Without the realization of these basic conditions, India cannot catch up with China.

On the issue of social equality, the biggest challenge India faces is the caste system. Although India's "democratic" system legally abolished the caste system, it failed to truly abolish this serious violation of human rights at the level of people's thinking and social life. system.In all aspects of Indian social life, the caste system still goes its own way.India has been independent for more than 60 years, but you can go to the elementary school classrooms in rural India: children of high caste sit on small wooden benches, read from textbooks, and write on small slates; children of low castes sit on the ground without textbooks and slates .Why can't the government abolish caste discrimination?The answer I got was: legally it is abolished, but the principal, teachers and students here are all Hindus. Everyone thinks it is natural and not awkward to do so, and the children of low castes themselves think it is reasonable to do so.In Hinduism, when untouchable believers go to offer incense, they can only stay outside the Hindu temple and cannot enter the temple.

There are also many NGOs in India dedicated to abolishing the caste system. They run their own schools and treat children of different castes equally. The spirit is commendable, but these efforts are only a drop in the bucket.The caste system is actually a part of Hinduism, and Hinduism itself has not experienced a religious reform movement, and India's "democratic" system is also unable to promote social revolution. As a result, the caste system has always plagued Indian society.If you ask 10 Indians whether it is possible to eliminate this system in the next 30 years, 9 people will tell you "it cannot be done".India has a population of 160 million untouchables. Such a large group has not been truly liberated. How can India achieve modernization?

To be fair, the Indian government has done a lot to eliminate the caste system.For example, government departments and public schools have places reserved for people of certain castes. When you apply for positions in government agencies and schools, you must fill in your caste, because you may be taken care of because of this.But in practice none of these measures can change the fact that the caste system is ubiquitous.The caste system is related to occupation as well as geographical distribution.For example, in Mumbai, there will be a large block of people who eat only vegetables, they will not accommodate meat eaters, and they will not accept restaurants and shops that sell meat.Marriage between different castes is rare.India's democratic electoral system has also helped to perpetuate this system to some extent.At the federal level, political parties are national and transcend caste, but at the local level, there is no such regulation, so many local political parties are entirely caste-based, which leads to the de facto perpetuation of the caste system .

India has also carried out land reform, but it is not thorough.The government with socialist tendencies wanted to distribute the land of the big landlords to the peasants, but it has been encountering great resistance.The laws bequeathed to India by the British included the law of the inviolability of private property.The big landowners who own land all emphasize that land reform is an illegal act. These people can also use various means to compete to become members of parliaments at all levels to prevent the government from introducing any land reform plan.In India, Pakistan, Nepal and other South Asian countries, the proportion of representatives of the landlord class in the parliament is very high, making it difficult for any real land reform plan to be passed in the parliament.

The number of landless farmers in South Asia is huge.Even some farmers who obtained land through land reform often have too many family members and each person gets less land, unable to carry out large-scale operations, and most of them finally resold the land.Traditional Indian customs stipulate that the land is passed on to sons or brothers, and men tend to go to cities to find jobs with higher wages, while women who stay in the countryside are unable to farm and eventually sell their land.India also has the traditional custom of women's dowry. Many families sell their land and buy dowry gifts for their daughters when they get married. This is one of the reasons for the increase of landless farmers.

Women's emancipation in India also has a long way to go.Arranged marriages and child marriages are widespread.When a woman gets married, she must present a large amount of dowry to her husband. Every year, tens of thousands of women are burned to death due to insufficient dowry.In Hinduism, when a woman marries, her husband is generally regarded as her master.The low status of women hinders the display of wisdom and abilities of Indian women.Although there are heavyweight figures such as Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi in the Indian political arena, just like Mrs. Benjamin Bhutto in Pakistan, this does not mean that women in these countries have a high status, but it just shows the quality of democracy in these countries. The problem is that most people still have a blind superstition about the spouse or offspring of a celebrity.

In January 2008 I went to Brussels to attend a seminar on the rise of China and India organized by the European Policy Center.Professor Jayne and I from Jawaharlal Nehru University introduced the rise of China and India and their impact on Europe respectively.Professor Jain admitted that the strategic dialogue between the EU and China has reached a considerable depth, and India has not yet reached this level. He said: "India has not yet reached China's level. China is at the Olympic level, and India is only at the Commonwealth Games level. "Professor Klausk, the founder of the center, is a senior scholar. He asked me to compare the political systems of China and India. I said: "Democratic system is a means, and it must ultimately be implemented at the level of national governance. So far, China's state governance is better than India's." In fact, the problem of the quality of democracy in India is concentrated in the low quality of its government services. Mr. S is one of my excellent Indian students.Once we talked about the quality of the Indian government, he said to me: Dealing with Indian government departments is like going to a Hindu temple to worship gods. You have to learn a whole set of the most complicated movements in the world, knowing when to kneel and what When to lie down, when to lie down, when to chant sutras.He said that to apply for a passport to go abroad, you have to go through dozens of people and stand in line for several days.In the end, everyone tried to spend money to buy relationships. These are all open secrets. Mr. S also told me that there are also political reasons for India’s backwardness in literacy: the local government is generally responsible for literacy work, and the heads of local governments are often not enthusiastic about literacy, and even privately think that the more illiterate they are, the easier it is for them to win votes in elections.Western scholars also emphasize the role of the government when studying the differences in the development models of China and India. Many people in the West also believe that India is a country ruled by law, so it has a better future than China.In fact, as long as you go to India and observe it on the spot, you will know that Indian laws have already constituted a heavy burden for India in many ways.Laws enacted decades ago are outdated, but it is very difficult for you to change them.The most obvious is the Indian labor laws that cause headaches for foreign businessmen.India's labor law is a system, including more than 40 different laws, including the Trade Union Act of 1926 and the Labor Dispute Resolution Act of 1947. It is very difficult for a company to fire a worker.Such laws seem to protect the interests of workers, but in fact they reduce people's employment opportunities by hindering investment.An Indian friend told me that he lived in Kaifeng for 3 days, and what impressed him most was that Kaifeng's sanitation workers started cleaning the streets every morning.He said that in big cities like New Delhi and Mumbai in India, this standard cannot be achieved. The sanitation workers are "organized" and have their own unions. Half of them often find various excuses not to come to work, so the city is generally dirty. . There is another huge difference between India's reforms and China's reforms, which is that China can publicize and promote reforms with great fanfare, but many reforms in India can only be carried out quietly.Although India has the so-called freedom of speech and media freedom, the mainstream ideology has always been "left" since independence in 1947, and the reforms currently being carried out are generally considered to be "right", so the government rarely publicizes reforms Necessity, most Indians don't know about "reform", and the reformists in the government actually "talk less and do more".However, if there is no general public awareness of the reform, the reform will naturally encounter many obstacles in practice.India imitated China to build various special zones, but the progress was very slow, and it encountered resistance from various forces, which is an example.On the surface, India appears to be an open society, but in fact ordinary Indians know far less about the outside world than China.The Chicago Global Affairs Council of the United States conducted a survey in India in 2007, and found that most of the interviewees believed that their country was already the second most powerful country in the world after the United States. (International Herald Tribune, February 2, 2007) I once said to Professor Jayne from India that from my own research, I have not found a developing country that can achieve modernization through one person, one vote, but I hope that India can embark on a road to modernization so that it can achieve modernization. Bring hope to more developing countries.In recent years, India has also made some outstanding achievements in many aspects, especially the software industry and the pharmaceutical industry. Many of the unique experiences are worth learning from; but generally speaking, because there is no strong government dedicated to modernization, India has not Some fundamental problems restricting modernization can be overcome, such as the caste system, women's emancipation, land reform, illiteracy and extreme poverty.In this sense, it is indeed not easy for India to catch up with China.Now the whole world is talking about the rise of China and India.An EU official once told me that European investors generally believe that if you invest in China and India, you may experience failure, but if you don’t go there, then you have already failed.The two big Asian countries, China and India, should finally join hands to learn from each other's strengths and embark on their own path to modernization. This will be a major event that will truly change the political and economic structure of the world.