Comparing India, China Growth Rates Futile: Chinese Daily


BEIJING: India and China have specific circumstances with different national strengths, and comparison by the West of their future growth rates to prove that the political system of one is superior to the other does not make any sense, says a Chinese media report.

The IMF recently predicted that India was expected to grow at 6.5 percent in 2016 to overtake China's projected growth rate of 6.3 percent. India was also expected to keep this leading position for quite a long time.

An opinion piece in the Global Times Thursday stated that some "thrilled" Western scholars used the prediction to claim that India's "democratic system" gives more spur to development and innovation than China's "authoritarian system".

The daily, however, pointed out that those who made such claims took into account only the political systems followed by the two Asian economies to analyse their economic growth, and chose to ignore their ethnic culture.

Thus, it is impossible for them to get a thorough understanding of the change of the two nations' growth rate, it said.

"If a country could upgrade its innovational ability only by having a similar system to the Western countries, there wouldn't be such an enormous gap between Germany and Greece, and countries in the eurozone wouldn't have the headaches that are troubling them these days."

The reason, the report added, why China kept a faster growth rate than India in the past three decades was that "Chinese stuck to the fine traditions such as hard work".

It cited an observation made by India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who warned that poverty might be getting deified in India, while "the desire to be rich has been whetted among thousands of people in China after the country adopted the reform and opening-up policy".

Also Read: Reforms In Defence Production To Be In Place Soon: Manohar Parrikar
Tata Communications Bags $20 Million Deal From KION Group

Source: IANS