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

discspinner

Junior Member
Registered Member
This is misleading in several ways.

1. GDP on a currency exchange rate bases does not reflect the scale of productivity, rather it is skewed by current account balance and differences of prices for goods not normally purchased or sold internationally. So using GDP in nominal dollars is not a valid measure of economic output or productivity.

2. On purchase power parity basis, which actually does measure the real size of the economy, India’s GDP in 2020 is about 9 trillion dollars. That of the continent of Africa is about 6 trillion dollars. So no, India is not poorer than Africa on per capita basis. By comparison, that of China in 2020 is about 21 trillion dollars, and that of the US 19 trillion dollars. But, adjusted for inflation, China’s GDP PPP was the same as India’s now as recently as 2007.

3. As recently as 2002, China’s overall GDP on PPP basis was lower than that or Africa. So less 20 years go, one could have ridiculed China’s economy with the same comparison you invoked, except the comparison could have been in PPP terms, which is valid and meaningful, unlike yours.

So again, looking even slightly below the surface, you see India is not nearly as far behind China as many people in China seems prefer to think. 15 - 20 years still seems a good number.

Oh, yes:

4. While Africa is certainly the poorest continent, and abject poverty is rampant in parts of the continent, major parts of Africa is not as poor as you think. On a purchase power parity basis, in 2020 the GDP per capita of 12 African countries was greater than $10,000, or richer, on per capita basis, than some European countries such as Ukraine and Kosovo. To give a comparative indication, Averaged overall, Africa’s GDP PPP per capita is roughly equal to that of Vietnam. So even when seen overall, the continent of Africa is poor, but not quite as poor as being suitable to use as stand in for abject poverty, as you so apparently gleefully think.

GDP isn't very good at discerning the details. I will make 1 point. China's GDP 15 - 20 years ago was a much larger percentage of total global GDP back then compared to India's percentage of total global GDP right now.
 

discspinner

Junior Member
Registered Member
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.

Absolutely garbage. There are many educated estimates for how many Indians died. See NYT estimate from a few weeks ago (
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
). The only reason the per capita rate may have been 'better' is because half of India's population is under 25 and have probably built up strong immune systems from living in dirty conditions for most of their life. Oh, and the ones who had poor immune systems already died (you know the estimated 824,000 annual under age 5 mortality,
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
). In any case, the sad reality is most people in the world, except a few on this forum, and many in India itself, don't know, won't know, and don't care to know what the real toll is.
 

sndef888

Senior Member
Registered Member
I beg to differ. China will still be populated with Chinese people in 500 years. What about the US?
As long as America's political system remains, it will always be a corporate-run, militaristic imperialist hellhole. Regardless of the color of the people running it
 

PiSigma

"the engineer"
Absolutely garbage. There are many educated estimates for how many Indians died. See NYT estimate from a few weeks ago (
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
). The only reason the per capita rate may have been 'better' is because half of India's population is under 25 and have probably built up strong immune systems from living in dirty conditions for most of their life. Oh, and the ones who had poor immune systems already died (you know the estimated 824,000 annual under age 5 mortality,
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
). In any case, the sad reality is most people in the world, except a few on this forum, and many in India itself, don't know, won't know, and don't care to know what the real toll is.
He also forgot that what India considers to be a literate person is anyone who can write their own name... The same standard Chinese people apply to their 5 year olds.

In china, to be considered literate, need to know 5000 characters by 16.

So India's real literacy rate is much much lower than the 70% they promote. It's actually 20-30% lower, especially for women. There is a reason why voting in India is most done with a thumb print on the ballot and not written in name.
 

discspinner

Junior Member
Registered Member
Look, I am not one to say that India doesn't have the 'potential' in the future. Here is how I look at it. China's per capita gdp is still ranked #61 by the IMF as of 2021 (
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
). Some neighboring countries on that list above China are Palau, Panama, Romania, Uruguay. Notably, post-pandemic, China has now surpassed Brazil, Turkey and Russia, something unimaginable 20 years ago.

The bottom line is this: even if you were to go all the way to the top of that list where the US stands, it is painfully obvious that no other country on Earth has the breadth and depth of talent, resources, and technology to go toe to toe with the US. Not Britain, France, Germany, Japan, or Korea. Only China presents a serious challenge.

India will have to prove that it is an exception and an outlier as well, nominal or PPP GDP be damned.
 

Nutrient

Junior Member
Registered Member
2. The per capita productivity of Indian economy in 2020, measured by PPP, and adjusted for inflation is 6 times high than China’s in 1971, and about the same as China’s in 2004.

Something is very suspect.

According to the World Bank***, in 1990 India's per capita GDP (PPP), measured in constant 2017 international dollars, was actually 27% larger than China's (1809.80 for India, 1423.90 for China).

So someone was probably faking data, either India or China, or both. On reputation, the probability is that India was doing the faking -- and is still doing it.


*** Here's how I got the numbers:
1. Download
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
from the World Bank. It's a ZIP file.
2. Unzip this.
3. One of the extracted components is a CSV file called "API...2447732.csv".
4. Load the CSV file into your favorite spreadsheet. I used Gnumeric.
5. You will see data for all countries. Compare the India/China lines.
 

hkbc

Junior Member
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.

'Impact' not 'Response' Modi's response to the 2nd wave was dire, literally Nero like, the impact, however, has not to date been quite as severe as in the nonchalant west, with lives at least, but those rosy IMF and world bank predictions of growth from the beginning of the year are down the toilet! Never mind there's always next year and the year after that, 'One day, Rodney we'll be millionaires'

The India has potential argument is just that 'potential' the realisation of that potential is as distant today as it was 20, 40, 60 years ago,
buy a lottery ticket every week and you have the potential to be a millionaire, doesn't mean its automatic! That's the issue with your entire premise, which boils down to

'Look I have a lottery ticket ipso facto I'll be a millionaire, look there's 1.3 billion lottery tickets we'll be a super power! Why are you disagreeing with me? If you don't have a lottery ticket you'll never be a millionaire, so I must be right!'
 

AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
Indians use to brag India had more billionaires than China. Now China has more billionaires than India. You hear the excuse that China is only ahead of India because it had a head start on economic reforms. Then how did they once have more billionaires than China. It's the same problem that exists today which is in India the wealth gap is far more greater than it has ever been in China. All the money is in possession by the few which is why the median household income for the average Indian family is actually far lower than the official median.
 
Top