Pranab Bardhan, a professor of mine at UC Berkeley, whom we have met before here (see Crouching Tiger, Lumbering Elephant, and Pranab Bardhan on the Indian Economy, for instance) has an excellent article in the Boston Review titled “What Makes a Miracle: Some myths about the Rise of China and India.” (Hat tip: Yuvaraj Galada.)
He states the standard view explaining the rapid growth of the two countries:
What explains this strikingly rapid growth? The answer that continues to dominate public discussion in the United States runs along the following lines: …

Golf, not Chess
Economic growth in a sense, and to a much larger extent economic development, is more akin to a game of golf than a game of chess. In golf, the opponent’s moves matter very little; you may as well play by yourself and later compare scores if needed. In chess, your move depends on how your opponent has moved and how he is likely to respond to your move. In other words, chess is a strategic game while golf is not. All this is very broadly speaking, naturally. I …

Here is another bit from Anand’s comments.
The collective leadership that is fueling china’s growth today will have to go away in the future. Communism is not going to last long enough for china to become a developed nation. Once communism collapses and democracy begins to form in china, there will be a prolonged period of little or zero growth in the country’s economy.
That is when India will overtake china.

It is very likely wishful thinking combined with admirable patriotism that motivates Anand above. The engine of communism has been decoupled …

In Crouching Tiger, Lumbering Elephant, an essay which recently appeared in a collection, Pranab Bardhan of UC Berkeley (one of my advisors during my doctoral work there) compares India and China while leading up to the main thesis of the paper. He concludes that
By most criteria of standard economic measurements of levels of living and their growth, China has clearly won the race.
To support his conclusion, he notes
Over the last three decades official data suggest that the average annual rate of …