What’s the real score in the near double-digit growth rates of China and India in recent years? Are they clear-cut indications that both countries are surely on their way to becoming world powers capable of eclipsing both North America and Europe? Two recently published books have attempted to answer these questions, Pranab Bardhan’s
Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India (Princeton University Press, 192 pages) and Edward Steinfeld’s
Playing Our Game: Why China's Rise Doesn’t Threaten the West (Oxford University Press, USA, 280 pages).
In “Interdependency Theory: China, India, and the West,” a socio-political analysis of the two books in the September/October 2010 issue of
Foreign Affairs Magazine, Simon Tay says that Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay is a welcome corrective to the view that China’s and India’s growth will continue at a breakneck pace for decades. “It succinctly summarizes the challenges facing China and India, including environmental degradation, unfavorable demographics, poor infrastructure, and social inequality—threats that the leaders of China and India understand,” he says.
In the same article, Tay says that Steinfeld’s book
Playing Our Game offers a different perspective on China’s rise, arguing that the changes in China’s economic and political systems are not contradictory but are more or less in sync because of China’s having developed the capability for “institutional outsourcing” from the global system. Agreeing with Steinfield’s argument, Tay asserts: “Having been influenced by foreign investors and experts, the Chinese government and business community have deliberately altered China’s commercial environment, especially with regard to legal institutions and industrial-labor relations.”
But Tay says that with their simultaneous rise as economic powerhouses, China and India are now competing for markets, natural resources, commercial investment, and political influence in Asia and worldwide. “The challenge for Beijing and New Delhi is to combine power and legitimacy,” he says. “Only then can the Chinese and Indian governments take measures that may be unpopular in the short run or damaging to some politically connected sectors but necessary for long-term progress: stimulating job growth, alleviating poverty, protecting the environment, or other vital tasks.”
Read Simon Tay’s “Interdependency Theory” in Foreign Affairs Magazine now!RELATED READING:In “China and India: Contest of the Century,” an article in its August 19, 2010 issue,
The Economist asserts that with their rise as economic powers, the two countries should be playing a bigger role in shaping the rules that will govern the 21st century. “That requires concessions from the West,” the magazine says. “But it also requires commitment to a rules-based international order from China and India.”
Read “China and India: Contest of the Century” in The Economist now!
