Impact of China's rise in the world - Long term predictions (30-50 years)

Ah, yes, Modi’s premature gloating is now certainly going to go down in history for the epic irony.

But funeral pyres aside, overall, Indian still did far better in dealing with Covid than the US. For every Indian who died of covid, 2 Americans died. And there are only 1/4 as many Americans as there are Indians.

India certainly didn;t do nearly as well as China, but few did. However, India’s performance really is still quite good compared to many other countries in terms number of infections per million, and number of deaths per million. Better than the US, better than much of Europe, including Germany, England, France. The optics of the second wave was certainly terrible. But overall the effect is not nearly as extreme as the funeral pyres implied.

dandelion clock said:

I think I've been more baffled by a much much smaller country, South Korea's achievements in almost every aspect (militarywise, e.g. after recently launching a 5 generation KFX fighter jet, they just revealed their Transport Aircraft and CV plan, not to mention its well-known semiconductor industry, automobile, machinery, nuclear power plant, shipbuilding, so-called K-Pop and film industry, all of which supposedly superior to China for that matter) for a country with such a small population, and I don't see any downward or stagnant trend or possibility compared even to a future rising India, but excellence even faced with serious competition from, say China.
(Not a fan of that country though, more like not being satisfied with ourselves, defiantly so, in light of our sheer population alone. Don't know if most common Indian people would share such seemingly simple and only natural feelings?)

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Person for person, South Korea certainly could be amongst the world’a major powers. If South Koreans neighborhood was generally stable, prosperous, andlargely free from effects of historic animosity, and South Korea is economically and foreign policy wise integrated with a number of regional partners of similar size, as is the case with major states of western Europe, then South Korea could be reckoned to be a major power nearly on par with Britain or France.

But with 1/30 as many people as China, and only about 1/3 as many people as Japan, historic animosity with Japan and North Korea, and to less degree with China, and south Korea’s options to exert world power from its own neighborhood becomes very limited.

It’s not how strong you are, it is how many other people are holding you down and how strong they are, that determines how much influence you really have.

Richard Santos said:

Actually, According to the World Bank, it has. But world bank uses nominal dollars to measure GDP per capita, with the attendant problems of that method. If we list GDP per capita by purchase power parity, and break the list into same income groups the same way WB uses with nominal GEP per capital, India even manage to just barely make it into the upper middle income group.

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Hahaha… you are funny. Jai Hind!!!

vincent said:

Hahaha… you are funny. Jai Hind!!!

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not only are you ignorant, but you also can’t be taught.

Richard Santos said:

not only are you ignorant, but you also can’t be taught.

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Sure, Modi’s stats are so believable

vincent said:

Sure, Modi’s stats are so believable

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Why you bother to feed the troll. The above post alone is worthy of a ban. Let alone the off topic rant about his super duper India!

Richard Santos said:

... funeral pyres aside, overall, Indian still did far better in dealing with Covid than the US. For every Indian who died of covid, 2 Americans died. And there are only 1/4 as many Americans as there are Indians.

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There are people washing ashore after their corpses were dumped into the river and you still believe Indian stats on COVID-19 deaths?

Modi has been nothing but a disaster as a leader.

no doubt Modi has been a major disaster whether for Indian democracy, for Indian covid response, or for Indian aspiration to further grow as IT outsource capital.

Also Modi has been a rather enthusiastic instigator of ethnic pogroms.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the overall affect of Indian Covid response was still better than those of many more developed countries in Europe and America.

Yes, india COVID stats are probably under reported. but the gap between India’s reported stats and those of some developed countries is so huge it is unlikely to be filled by later reexamination it reported numbers.

For example real Indian stats would have to be almost an order of magnitude worse than reported stats to be as bad as reported US stats. US CDC is now saying the real US stats are probably around twice as bad as reported. So real indian stats would have to be 16 times worse than reported stats to be as bad as the probable actual US stats.

Yes, the US under Trump staged by far the worst COVID response of any major country in the world, so it is a low bar to get over to beat it. but still, beating Germany ain’t bad.

dandelion clock said:

I think I've been more baffled by a much much smaller country, South Korea's achievements in almost every aspect (militarywise, e.g. after recently launching a 5 generation KFX fighter jet, they just revealed their Transport Aircraft and CV plan, not to mention its well-known semiconductor industry, automobile, machinery, nuclear power plant, shipbuilding, so-called K-Pop and film industry, all of which supposedly superior to China for that matter) for a country with such a small population, and I don't see any downward or stagnant trend or possibility compared even to a future rising India, but excellence even faced with serious competition from, say China.
(Not a fan of that country though, more like not being satisfied with ourselves, defiantly so, in light of our sheer population alone. Don't know if most common Indian people would share such seemingly simple and only natural feelings?)

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South Korea definitely stands out as being one of the most impressive nations in the post WW2 era in terms of development. They started off post war as one of the poorest nations in the world and in about half a century they managed to become one of the core industrial nations within the global supply chain. I think culture has big impact on long term economic outcomes.

The global supply chain only has a few countries that control the major chokepoints despite involving many other nations, they are the core industrial nations. Survival of an entity within the global system is not a given nor a right, it needs to be negotiated based on what they can offer or take. Core industrial nations provide the necessities of a modern lifestyle from tools to products to knowledge thus hold disproportionate bargaining power. Non-core industrial nations are subject to exploitation because they are more replaceable just like a low level fast food worker. It doesn't mean what they do is easy or unimportant but it just negotiates less resources.

From the perspective of the global hegemon (the political entity that controls the commanding heights of production), harvesting smaller core industrial nations is easy because they lack complete supply chains, sanctions will cripple their ability to specialize. Under sanctions these nations would need to reorient resources away from their competencies towards building a more complete supply chain and draw surplus from a smaller base. US due to its relative economic robustness is able to act as a system integrator for the specializations of all these core industrial nations like South Korea. Most of these core industrial nations are very specialized due to their population and require to be a part of a much larger trading system to maintain their specialization or competitive edge. These countries lack complete supply chains to satisfy all core needs of a modern lifestyle thus sanctions can be devastating. Combination of population and sufficient technology level is needed to offset the effects of sanctions.

US, EU, and China are currently the few entities capable of being global system integrators due to combination of population and technological capabilities. System integrators build global platforms where they can decide the rules. Core nations draw in disproportionate surplus and utilize it towards R&D to increase future productivity and create a positive feedback loop. For long term development, it is imperative for China to form a positive feed back loop with less developed nations to funnel greater resources into higher value added industries. The fundamental elements of a civilization's vitality being energy, raw materials, technology, land and human capital. A circulation with complementary regions enables self sustaining growth. Direct competition with developed regions might provide less returns for certain investments. Its like Mao's strategy of first taking the countryside.

Right now China has potential but isn't a true system integrator. Once they are able to climb up the technological ladder likely in the next decade or two, there would be a major change in the global order. The medium sized global players will become more active as they will have more options to choose from with less devastating consequences compared to before under an unipolar world, their bargaining power would increase.

Richard Santos said:

Again, india is not nearly as badly educated as you think. The percent of population with 4 year college degrees in India is actually quite close to in China. The overall literacy rate in India (74%) is much lower than in China now (97.6%) but it was only 35 years ago when China’s literacy rate first reached 74%.

If you look at the distribution of productivity in China, a region covering China’s eastern seaboard and home to about 30% of China’s population contributes over 80% of China’s productivity. The other 70% of China’s population is far behind the eastern seaboard and contributes little to China’s economic total output. If 50% of that 70% is illiterate, China’s overall economy would hardly notice. The same situation applies to India.

So China’s 97.6% literacy rate is commendable, and it represents an impressive humanistic achievement and gives the CCP bragging rights. But in reality it was not crucial to China’s economic rise. For the same reason, India’s 74% literacy rate is unseemly, and by comparison, it is somewhat embarrassing. But in reality it probably is not a bottleneck to India’s economic growth.

As someone who thinks a democratic form of government is ultimately necessary for a fully developed economy to continue to advance reasonably efficiently, I do agree it is not necessarily the best form of government to enable a partially developed economy to rapidly catch up. But India’s democracy is dying. The government of Modi is sharply authoritarian. It is not unlikely that india will rewrite her constitution in the next 10 years to enshrine a strong, centralized, ethnocentric authoritarian executive. India may not acquire a Chinese style communist party, but she could well acquire right wing authoritarian governing party similar to those which ruled over South Korea and Taiwan when these two states experienced their own extraordinary spurts of growth between 1970-1990.

Speaking of extraordinary spurts of growth, China’s growth rate between 1990 and 2020 was not unprecedented. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan had all managed broadly similar growth rates when they evolved out of rural poverty to industrialization between 1950s and 1980s. What made China’s growth extraordinary boils down to one thing - size of the population. The same growth rate applied over a much larger number of people resulted in an much bigger final product. it is still China’s extraordinary size that turned fast growth into a super power.

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You failed to mention the organizing and mobilization of resources to execute national level industrial policies in East Asian nations. It is what delivers, what gets things done. It's the one area that India lacks glaringly when it comes to actual execution of policies. If India can build an organizing and mobilization process that parallels those of East Asians nations, and consistently get things done by that process, then there might be some consideration to give you the benefit of doubt that India in a medium term future may as well be able to pull it off as China does. Otherwise, it is just one of those India Shining talks, which was, just talk.