India May Be Primed to Narrow Its Economic Gap With China
China increasingly is seen abroad as a huge economic success and a major competitive threat. Its export prowess is lifting millions of Chinese out of poverty and frightening manufacturers and factory workers not only in the U.S., but everywhere from Malaysia to Mexico to Madrid.
India -- despite its impressive call centers, software firms and pharmaceuticals factories -- is viewed as a less successful economy and a less formidable competitor. The Chinese have order, discipline, modern telephones and roads, less poverty and faster economic growth. The Indians have democracy, chaos, lousy phones and roads, more poverty and slower growth.
So now come a couple of academics, a Chinese-born political scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Indian-born Harvard Business School professor with a provocative argument: The future belongs to India.
China's success and global reputation reflect the huge foreign investment in factories, buildings and machinery. Foreign direct investment in China is more than 10 times India's. In part, China benefits from a larger and wealthier diaspora.. China also welcomed foreign companies, partly to avoid creating its own class of capitalists. "China was sold to multinationals to allow it to sidestep entrepreneurs," Harvard's Tarun Khanna says in an interview, acknowledging that may be changing now.
Still, "you would be hard-pressed to find a single homegrown Chinese firm that operates on a global scale and markets its own products abroad," Mr. Khanna and colleague Yasheng Huang write in Foreign Policy magazine.
India shunned foreign investment for a time and, even after changing its mind, failed to attract much of it. But the professors note it has something that China doesn't: "companies that compete with the best that Europe and the U.S. have to offer," such as software company Infosys Technologies Ltd. and pharmaceuticals maker Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd. India lacks the physical hardware of a modern economy, but it has more of the software of a modern economy -- courts, financial system and the like -- than China.
Their bottom line: "India's homegrown entrepreneurs may give it a long-term advantage over a China hamstrung by inefficient banks and capital markets."
The argument, not surprisingly, is making them very popular in India. Their article has been widely described or reprinted in the Indian press, not always with permission. (Note to India: Intellectual-property rights matter.) The Chinese, Mr. Khanna hears, are translating it and distributing it discreetly.
But do they have the story right? No simple generalization about countries so large and diverse can ever be truly accurate. And no comparisons between them obscure the reality that both have done much better since shifting economic strategies (in 1978 in China, in 1991 in India).
The question boils down to this: Can India close the gap with China over the next 20 years so that more of its people prosper and it overshadows China as a global competitor?
Professors Khanna and Huang think so. Other observers are skeptical. "They're wrong in suggesting China is taking the wrong route," cautions Sunil Dasgupta of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "It's already richer than India. India is going to be playing catch-up for the next 20 years."
But Joydeep Mukherji , who tracks India and China for Standard & Poor's in New York, thinks the professors are onto something. Taking a number-cruncher's approach, he finds the Chinese miracle less impressive than its press clippings. Shave a bit off the official statistics for exaggeration, and China has grown perhaps 7% a year for the past decade or so. India has grown 6%. But China, as a nation, saves about 40% of income, and invests that plus what foreigners invest. India saves about 24% domestically, and draws relatively little foreign investment.
So China, to make it simple, is like a business that invests $40 and earns $7 a year. India invests $24 and earns $6 a year. "A huge amount of money in China is wasted," Mr. Mukherji says, particularly investments made in China by the Chinese government. "For a country that's so big and saving so much, China is unusually dependent on foreign investment." That is key to its success, but also underscores how poorly its domestic investments fare. About half the loans made by China's banks will never be paid back; a lot of Chinese savings has been squandered.
"India gets more bang for its buck," Mr. Mukherji says. Its banks have less than half as many bad loans as China's. "The bottom line for me: If India can raise its savings and investment rate modestly, then it can raise its growth rate quickly."
That "if" so often creeps into conversations about India, and it's an important qualifier. Mr. Huang and Mr. Khanna may yet prove to be lousy forecasters. But they wisely cast a skeptical eye on the durability of the Chinese economic miracle and call attention to India's sometimes-unappreciated potential to grow and compete.
印度与中国谁是未来霸主？
在外国人眼中，中国是一个日益强大的经济体，也是一个不容忽视的竞争对手。中国在出口方面的赫赫战绩使数百万中国人摆脱了贫困，同时也吓坏了全球各地的生产商和工人－－这当中不仅有美国，也包括从马来西亚到墨西哥再到西班牙等其他生产国。
相比之下，尽管印度的呼叫中心、软件公司和制药业引人瞩目，但该国却被视为不那么成功的经济体，其作为竞争者的威胁力也不那么大。中国社会秩序井然，民众遵纪守法，现代化的通讯设备和道路也随处可见，贫困程度低于印度，经济增长也更为迅猛。印度拥有什么呢？民主政体，混乱的秩序，落后的通讯设备和交通状况，更多的穷人，更慢的经济增长。
但现在有两名学者却提出一个颇具争议性的观点，那就是：未来属于印度。这二人分别是麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)一名生于中国的政治学家黄亚生和哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)一名生于印度的教授Tarun Khanna。
在中国的成功和国际声誉背后，是外商在该国工厂、建筑和机械设备方面的巨大投资。在中国的外商直接投资是印度的十倍以上，原因之一是：居住在世界各地的中国人越来越多，也越来越富有，他们是中国得天独厚的投资来源。中国也欢迎外国公司进入，部份是为防止形成自己的资本家阶级。哈佛大学的Tarun Khanna在接受一次采访时表示："中国欢迎跨国公司，以使国内企业家退居次要地位。"但他承认，目前这种状况可能发生了改变。
Khanna和黄亚生还在杂志《外交政策》(Foreign Policy)上撰文称："尽管如此，在土生土长的中国企业中，很难找到一家在国外销售产品的全球化企业。"
印度曾一度将外商投资拒之门外，即便在转变思路后，仍未能吸引太多外资。但这两名教授强调，印度有中国不具备的某些东西，那就是能与欧美一流企业竞争的公司，如软件公司Infosys Technologies Ltd.和制药公司Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd.。印度缺少成为现代经济体的硬件，但却具备比中国更先进的现代经济体的软件－－包括法院、金融体系等。
总之，这两名学者认为："由于中国受到银行和资本市场效率低下的拖累，土生土长的企业家可能使印度比中国更具有长远优势。"
不用说，这一论点使他们在印度大受欢迎。他们的文章被印度媒体广泛散布和再版，有时并未征得许可。而中国在此文的翻译和传播方面则非常谨慎。
但是，他们的观点是否正确呢？对像中国和印度这样幅员辽阔、人口众多且颇具多样性的国家，没有任何简单笼统的描述能称得上真正的准确。而且，对两国的比较也无法淡化这样的事实，即两国在转变经济策略(中国在1978年，印度在1991年)后都有了很大改观。
问题的关键在于，印度能否在今后20年缩小与中国的差距，让更多的人富裕起来，并成为全球市场上比中国更有力的竞争者？
Khanna和黄亚生的答案是肯定的，而其他观察家则提出质疑。华盛顿智囊机构Brookings Institution的Sunil Dasgupta表示："他们(Khanna和黄亚生)认为中国行进的路线有误，对此我不敢苟同。中国已经比印度富足许多，印度在今后20年内都要奋起直追。"
但标准普尔(Standard & Poor's)负责追踪印度和中国的Joydeep Mukherji认为，那两位教授说得有些道理。以一个数字专家的观点来看，他发现中国的奇迹并不像媒体上报导的那么显著。考虑到夸大的因素，如果将官方数字略打些折扣，中国经济在过去十年的年增长率约为7%，印度的年增长率为6%。但银行储蓄在中国全国收入中所占比例高达40%，这部分资金再加上外商投资，数额相当可观。印度国内储蓄率只有约24%，外商投资相对较少。
因此简单地说，中国就好比一个企业，每年投资40美元，收入7美元，印度每年投资24美元，收入6美元。Mukherji说，中国有很大一部分资金都被浪费掉了，特别是政府投资。对于一个储蓄如此高的大国来说，中国对外资的依赖程度非同一般。这是成功的关键，但也凸显了国内投资效率的低下。中国的银行贷款中约有一半是不良贷款，大量存款被挥霍掉了。
Mukherji说："印度对资金的利用则更为有效。"该国的银行不良贷款不到中国的一半。他说，"总之，如果印度适当提高存款和投资比率，就可望迅速提高经济增长率。"
这种假设常常出现在关于印度的讨论中，并具有重要的参考价值。黄亚生和Khanna的观点最终可能被证实是蹩脚的预言，但不管怎样，他们对中国经济奇迹持久性的质疑有理有据，而对印度常常被忽视的增长和竞争潜力的分析也颇具新意，发人深思。
数据对比 中国 印度人口 12.8亿 10.5亿贫困人口 10% 25%90年代经济增长率 9.6% 5.5%外国投资* 442亿美元 34亿美元每千人拥有电话 247.7 43.8* 散居海外人口 5,500万 2,000万*2001年数据数据来源：《外交政策》
