This was from a book published 7 years ago and said by LKY quite a bit further in the past. China's economy is no longer 3.5 times larger than India's it's now 5 times larger. India is no longer growing at 66% the rate at which China's growing, it is considerably lower and has nothing on the horizon to look forward to EXCEPT decades of cheap manual labour in an effort to really industrialise itself and learn something... where China was in the 1990s or even 1980s. LKY doesn't make any conclusive statements here except offering what he thinks China's economic strategy is in case of a competitive India. Except India has yet to become even competitive against Vietnam.
Ladakh Flash Point
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This was from a book published 7 years ago and said by LKY quite a bit further in the past. China's economy is no longer 3.5 times larger than India's it's now 5 times larger. India is no longer growing at 66% the rate at which China's growing, it is considerably lower and has nothing on the horizon to look forward to EXCEPT decades of cheap manual labour in an effort to really industrialise itself and learn something... where China was in the 1990s or even 1980s. LKY doesn't make any conclusive statements here except offering what he thinks China's economic strategy is in case of a competitive India. Except India has yet to become even competitive against Vietnam.
The phenomenon you're looking at here is a brain drain. India's best and brightest have left India to seek much better opportunities overseas, which depletes India of much needed talent. Unlike many Chinese who in the late 90s and early 00s went overseas and returned with enhanced knowledge, Indians are not willing to go back to their country for obvious reasons (e.g. poverty) once they leave. The massive green card backlog for Indians (approximately 8 years) should show you how desperately they want to remain in the US and is the same reason why the growth of India's domestic industries has stunted.
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Indian overseas does better in general than Chinese overseas for simple reasons, the best of China's people doesn't move to other countries. The ones you get didn't move out like Indians mostly do in order to get new opportunities or be professionals, they moved out because of life circumstances. If you pick a random Chinese foreigner it's no different from picking a random person inside China, they could be any education level with any type of aspiration. However, Indians are overwhelmingly from the educated class.
Measuring success in terms of whose expatriates does better is a bad joke. You won't find many overseas German, Singaporean or Finnish in important positions, yet the education level in these countries are good.
Measuring success in terms of whose expatriates does better is a bad joke. You won't find many overseas German, Singaporean or Finnish in important positions, yet the education level in these countries are good.
There isn't a lot of strong indication overseas Indians do better (in what sense?) than Chinese diaspora. In fact I'd say it's probably the opposite. Anyway this is starting to get off topic. As far as I have observed, overseas Chinese aren't as politically involved or sensitive to this recent skirmish than overseas Indians. I know a few who have been constantly posting pro-Modi content in the last few weeks and expressing anger towards China. Well of course though, losers complain about circumstances more than winners.
I think many of us saw this coming. We will finally witness how the brave Indian army, despite being heavily outnumbered, slaughter 43 Chinese soldiers, all courtesy of Bollywood.
As I told Indian contacts, Modi is the most pro-China politician in India. That's why India can get away with all of this; China knows that beyond Modi, they have no one else to move in India. If it were a Congress government running the show in India, China would already have escalated and used its artillery superiority to destroy the Indian force build-up in Ladakh.
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The other part is that the Indians are plain delusional; on CDF, a non-Chinese poster mentioned that the Indians are delusional as to their relative power compared to China. They seriously think they have military parity, whereas a strong factor restraining China's hand is the threat of sanctions from the West if they escalate the Indian conflict fully.
When it comes to the military force equation, India DOES have more airbases close to China, but China has a few key tools at its disposal:
-China has a massive superiority in SPGs / SPHs, provided they actually want to move their equipment to the sector. China has way more modern SPG / SPH systems than India does, and most of these are long-ranged 155mm guns, whereas India has a good number of long-ranged rocket artillery systems (but not more than China's), but fewer 155mm caliber SPGs and a substantial number of 122mm or 105mm guns, too short-ranged to win an artillery duel. India also has a substantial number of towed artillery, but these can't shoot and scoot.
-China has more technologically advanced aircraft. India does have more airbases closer to the border than China, but China can, first, bombard these with ballistic missiles, and second, China has more modern systems. India mostly has Russian-built aircraft that are 4th generation. The best Indian Air Force equipment until the Rafales arrive on July 27th is the Su-30MKI, which has some Israeli electronics that may make it superior to Chinese Su-35s in the ECM-sphere.
However, Indian warplanes carry 4th generation missiles. Chinese missiles are 4.5th or 5th generation; the Chinese might not have a missile inventory more "advanced" than the United States in terms of electronic warfare, but, first, the PL-10 ASR is superior to the R-74Ms the Indians use, having 90 degree off-boresight with LOAL, rear-targeting, and anti-SAM functions, and more importantly, the R-74Ms purportedly have a 40 km aerodynamic range. The PL-10 ASR has a 20 km effective range and likely has a 60 km aerodynamic range. Second, the PL-15s outclass the R-77s the Indians use, likely being on par or superior to the Russian experimental K-77Ms for the Su-57.
The only missile the Indians will have that can match the PL-15 would be the Meteor coming in with the Rafales, but it'd be available in few numbers, and the Chinese J-20 would have a half to 1 generation advantage over the Rafales.
-More importantly, the Chinese don't even need to win the air war by a huge margin. The key Chinese capability is their superiority in artillery firepower, and artillery puts out more firepower for cost than aircraft does. Where the air war matters is that the Chinese SPG advantage is not usable if the InAF conducts airstrikes on Chinese SPGs; SPGs can counter towed-artillery quite effectively, but can do nothing against strike aircraft.
In other words, despite its inferiority in airbasing on the Sino-Indian border, China only needs to stop the InAF from bombing its aircraft effectively. And that's where the Chinese technological advantage comes in; the modern (4th generation) Indian aircraft can all be countered effectively by Chinese 4.5th and 5th generation aircraft and equipment. Less modern Indian aircraft can be effectively countered by Chinese ground-based air defense.
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One key aspect that I think both Indians and Chinese are misinformed about is the nature of Indian politics, that is to say, Indian politics are driven by nationalism, and in a different way than China is. Chinese nationalism is fueled by its economic and technological development. In other words, when the Chinese government wants to stir up their population, they point to the GDP growth rate, and how close the Chinese are to passing the United States as the world's key technological and economic power. India, in comparison, does not have the same developmental rate, and many informed Indians are in despair about its growth, development, and governance capability.
What India, in contrast, has for its nationalism, is its regional control. Indians are usually in denial about their status as an aggressive power, but India, unlike China, was not effectively contained by the United States during the Cold War and was regionally hegemonic. In the aftermath of decolonization, India was effective at annexing nearby powers and manipulating its neighbors. For instance, the Indians undertook the annexation of Goa and the annexation of Sikkim. They have been able to do well in most anti-Pakistani conflicts and were able to break off East Pakistan into the modern state of Bangladesh. Before China's recent emergence and development, they had moved Nepal into its sphere of influence, and still have undue influence in Bhutan, effectively rendering most of its neighbors its satellites.
China, in comparison, annexed the de facto independent territories of Xinjiang and Tibet, but all of these happened close to Liberation in 1949, and its territorial expansion has been limited since then; the main gains being gains on the border with Vietnam and the de facto annexation of Hong Kong. The closest China has to a satellite would be Pakistan, but Pakistan exerts its independent foreign policy and was also a partial American satellite during the Cold War.
In other words, we can see the difference in Indian and Chinese priorities. India wants to obtain sovereignty or suzerainty over former British India, and that is a priority over its own development. China also wants to reform the Sinosphere, but it is more focused on its internal development than to attempt, by force or by crook as with India, to do so. And neither India nor China's ambitions are unreasonable, given their population preponderance relative to its neighbors. But India is going to be more aggressive about it because of its own lackluster development.
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The best way to end the Ladakh stand-off would be both sides making mutual concessions. That it's escalated to this degree is the result of Chinese error; i.e, the Galwan clash was likely never supposed to have led to Indian fatalities, or to Indian fatalities to this degree.
What China needs is for India to agree to Chinese-mediated talks with Pakistan, with an eye to ending the Sino-Indian border disputes and the incessant Indo-Pakistani conflict. This is, in itself, a Chinese accommodation and acknowledgment of India's sphere of influence, but hopefully will come along with India acknowledging that China is not a defeatable strategic rival under the present circumstance. Likewise, China needs to accept Indian rights to its own strategic region, but only in the circumstance that India does not actively attempt to thwart Chinese interests. This requires that India is willing to put the border dispute away and provide territorial concessions to China in Aksai Chin and possibly Tawang.
The impediment to this, of course, is Indian nationalism which is unwilling to make any territorial concessions for anything. So we are, for the moment, at an impasse.
===
The other part is that the Indians are plain delusional; on CDF, a non-Chinese poster mentioned that the Indians are delusional as to their relative power compared to China. They seriously think they have military parity, whereas a strong factor restraining China's hand is the threat of sanctions from the West if they escalate the Indian conflict fully.
When it comes to the military force equation, India DOES have more airbases close to China, but China has a few key tools at its disposal:
-China has a massive superiority in SPGs / SPHs, provided they actually want to move their equipment to the sector. China has way more modern SPG / SPH systems than India does, and most of these are long-ranged 155mm guns, whereas India has a good number of long-ranged rocket artillery systems (but not more than China's), but fewer 155mm caliber SPGs and a substantial number of 122mm or 105mm guns, too short-ranged to win an artillery duel. India also has a substantial number of towed artillery, but these can't shoot and scoot.
-China has more technologically advanced aircraft. India does have more airbases closer to the border than China, but China can, first, bombard these with ballistic missiles, and second, China has more modern systems. India mostly has Russian-built aircraft that are 4th generation. The best Indian Air Force equipment until the Rafales arrive on July 27th is the Su-30MKI, which has some Israeli electronics that may make it superior to Chinese Su-35s in the ECM-sphere.
However, Indian warplanes carry 4th generation missiles. Chinese missiles are 4.5th or 5th generation; the Chinese might not have a missile inventory more "advanced" than the United States in terms of electronic warfare, but, first, the PL-10 ASR is superior to the R-74Ms the Indians use, having 90 degree off-boresight with LOAL, rear-targeting, and anti-SAM functions, and more importantly, the R-74Ms purportedly have a 40 km aerodynamic range. The PL-10 ASR has a 20 km effective range and likely has a 60 km aerodynamic range. Second, the PL-15s outclass the R-77s the Indians use, likely being on par or superior to the Russian experimental K-77Ms for the Su-57.
The only missile the Indians will have that can match the PL-15 would be the Meteor coming in with the Rafales, but it'd be available in few numbers, and the Chinese J-20 would have a half to 1 generation advantage over the Rafales.
-More importantly, the Chinese don't even need to win the air war by a huge margin. The key Chinese capability is their superiority in artillery firepower, and artillery puts out more firepower for cost than aircraft does. Where the air war matters is that the Chinese SPG advantage is not usable if the InAF conducts airstrikes on Chinese SPGs; SPGs can counter towed-artillery quite effectively, but can do nothing against strike aircraft.
In other words, despite its inferiority in airbasing on the Sino-Indian border, China only needs to stop the InAF from bombing its aircraft effectively. And that's where the Chinese technological advantage comes in; the modern (4th generation) Indian aircraft can all be countered effectively by Chinese 4.5th and 5th generation aircraft and equipment. Less modern Indian aircraft can be effectively countered by Chinese ground-based air defense.
===
One key aspect that I think both Indians and Chinese are misinformed about is the nature of Indian politics, that is to say, Indian politics are driven by nationalism, and in a different way than China is. Chinese nationalism is fueled by its economic and technological development. In other words, when the Chinese government wants to stir up their population, they point to the GDP growth rate, and how close the Chinese are to passing the United States as the world's key technological and economic power. India, in comparison, does not have the same developmental rate, and many informed Indians are in despair about its growth, development, and governance capability.
What India, in contrast, has for its nationalism, is its regional control. Indians are usually in denial about their status as an aggressive power, but India, unlike China, was not effectively contained by the United States during the Cold War and was regionally hegemonic. In the aftermath of decolonization, India was effective at annexing nearby powers and manipulating its neighbors. For instance, the Indians undertook the annexation of Goa and the annexation of Sikkim. They have been able to do well in most anti-Pakistani conflicts and were able to break off East Pakistan into the modern state of Bangladesh. Before China's recent emergence and development, they had moved Nepal into its sphere of influence, and still have undue influence in Bhutan, effectively rendering most of its neighbors its satellites.
China, in comparison, annexed the de facto independent territories of Xinjiang and Tibet, but all of these happened close to Liberation in 1949, and its territorial expansion has been limited since then; the main gains being gains on the border with Vietnam and the de facto annexation of Hong Kong. The closest China has to a satellite would be Pakistan, but Pakistan exerts its independent foreign policy and was also a partial American satellite during the Cold War.
In other words, we can see the difference in Indian and Chinese priorities. India wants to obtain sovereignty or suzerainty over former British India, and that is a priority over its own development. China also wants to reform the Sinosphere, but it is more focused on its internal development than to attempt, by force or by crook as with India, to do so. And neither India nor China's ambitions are unreasonable, given their population preponderance relative to its neighbors. But India is going to be more aggressive about it because of its own lackluster development.
===
The best way to end the Ladakh stand-off would be both sides making mutual concessions. That it's escalated to this degree is the result of Chinese error; i.e, the Galwan clash was likely never supposed to have led to Indian fatalities, or to Indian fatalities to this degree.
What China needs is for India to agree to Chinese-mediated talks with Pakistan, with an eye to ending the Sino-Indian border disputes and the incessant Indo-Pakistani conflict. This is, in itself, a Chinese accommodation and acknowledgment of India's sphere of influence, but hopefully will come along with India acknowledging that China is not a defeatable strategic rival under the present circumstance. Likewise, China needs to accept Indian rights to its own strategic region, but only in the circumstance that India does not actively attempt to thwart Chinese interests. This requires that India is willing to put the border dispute away and provide territorial concessions to China in Aksai Chin and possibly Tawang.
The impediment to this, of course, is Indian nationalism which is unwilling to make any territorial concessions for anything. So we are, for the moment, at an impasse.
Big big message to China.
Big democratic party today.
Your own personal experiences are clouding your view of the big picture.
Yes, I agree with Lee Kuan Yew that the best Indians are the equal of anyone else in the world.
But that is not representative of the average person in India.
For example, the United Nations runs PISA, which compares different countries in terms of basic literacy, numeracy and science.
That is important because this human capital lasts a lifetime and has a huge return in wages, living standards and society overall.
On the PISA rankings, we can see that the top end of the rankings is occupied by China, Western nations, and also Chinese/Confucian societies.
In comparison, the last time India participated in PISA was 10 years ago, when India literally came at the bottom of the rankings.
So what does that tell you about the average Indian, in terms of basic literacy, numeracy and science?
Note that Vietnam is at a similar wealth level to India, yet its scores are comparable to other Confucian societies like Japan and South Korea.
It is a powerful indicator of where India's future lies, because this legacy will remain with the Indian people for a lifetime.
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References below
The Hindustan Times article is a good example.
It is one of India's newspapers of record, yet even it is complaining that rural Indian students were expected to know about Genetically Modified Crops.
But rural students in India SHOULD know about Genetically Modified Crops, because they overwhelmingly come from an agricultural background.
It is the fault of the educational system if they haven't been taught about GM crops.
The important thing to note is that when Democracy Cultists start expounding about the superiorities of democracy, they're talking Sweden. Sweden is a highly-developed country that chose a ridiculously stupid coronavirus policy, but it has high human capital development and a good quality of life.
But India is also a democracy, and it's also a STABLE democracy in that its democracy is not going to liberalize further. The democracy of India works by creating enemies, whether they be the Pakistanis or the Chinese, and using them as scapegoats to question why living standards in India are so crap. The "give" that the Indian state and power structure gives Indians is the knowledge that they're the Indian and they're the regional hegemons--as long as they get their usual beatings of Pakistani militants or Nagaland insurgents, they're happy living waist deep in cow dung.
So I guess this is China discovering what democracy actually is; it's had a poor understanding of democratic politics as can be seen from the disaster in Hong Kong. Democracy is actually a variation of theocracy; if the people "rule" or are the medium of rule, you control the people by ideological control. That's why democracies in general have religious tolerance as a principal, because they're at an ideological crossroads. Either you admit that the people can be ridiculously stupid and misled to believe in a man in the sky that controls everything and that it might not be wise to allow these delusional people to control the levers of power, or you deny the existence of human fallibility and allow them to maintain ridiculous notions, with things like abortion bannings or religious murder as part of their "human rights".
This is, incidentally, also the superiority of democracy to autocratic systems. Since democracy is the constant struggle between ideological systems (what degree of religion should be in public life? How much should the state act against economic elites, social elites? What is the use of tradition? Each ideological system, also known as political party, in a democracy has a distinct viewpoint in such), and that it hasn't abolished itself to create an autocracy, it means that every democracy has stronger ideological force than an autocratic system by the virtue of sustaining itself.
But India is also a democracy, and it's also a STABLE democracy in that its democracy is not going to liberalize further. The democracy of India works by creating enemies, whether they be the Pakistanis or the Chinese, and using them as scapegoats to question why living standards in India are so crap. The "give" that the Indian state and power structure gives Indians is the knowledge that they're the Indian and they're the regional hegemons--as long as they get their usual beatings of Pakistani militants or Nagaland insurgents, they're happy living waist deep in cow dung.
So I guess this is China discovering what democracy actually is; it's had a poor understanding of democratic politics as can be seen from the disaster in Hong Kong. Democracy is actually a variation of theocracy; if the people "rule" or are the medium of rule, you control the people by ideological control. That's why democracies in general have religious tolerance as a principal, because they're at an ideological crossroads. Either you admit that the people can be ridiculously stupid and misled to believe in a man in the sky that controls everything and that it might not be wise to allow these delusional people to control the levers of power, or you deny the existence of human fallibility and allow them to maintain ridiculous notions, with things like abortion bannings or religious murder as part of their "human rights".
This is, incidentally, also the superiority of democracy to autocratic systems. Since democracy is the constant struggle between ideological systems (what degree of religion should be in public life? How much should the state act against economic elites, social elites? What is the use of tradition? Each ideological system, also known as political party, in a democracy has a distinct viewpoint in such), and that it hasn't abolished itself to create an autocracy, it means that every democracy has stronger ideological force than an autocratic system by the virtue of sustaining itself.
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