David Smith has
written an intriguing book regarding the rising economic superpowers of China
and India. Over the last few decades these two countries have surprised many
economists and politicians, due to their staggering economic growth, however
both have experienced this growth for very different reasons.
Smith firstly
makes it clear that this is not strange or out of the ordinary, in fact
throughout history, China and India have had significant periods of time being
economically prosperous or not. Therefore, this is just a cycle and is
inevitable, in addition, also like history whenever the West rises the East
falls and vice versa, so Smith argues that perhaps this is just normal. Smith
then argues about China and India and how they became economically prosperous,
China grew due to its booming industries and India grew due to its rise of
being transformed by technology, in particular offshore service industry.
However, the most
revealing part of this book is the final section, in which Smith reveals his
synthesis on ten ways China and India will or will not change the world. This
includes: China and India will stretch the current levels of resources,
however, due to their growing populations they can easily increase their level
of resources. In addition, China and India are not as big as they seem, in fact
in history there have been cases of economies that were larger, in their
context.
Although, Smith
does mention the problems of these two countries, I feel that he could have
provided more detail. This is most apparent with the corruption within India
and how significant amounts of their
population are still some of the poorest in the world. Therefore, it is true
that these two countries are economically prosperous and could perhaps continue
to grow, there are far graver issues regarding the general welfare of these
respective nations, which could escalate and cause problems in the future and
even in the present. On the other hand, even though the debate behind this
topic is too vast to divulge, it should be noted that both countries are
steadily improving the equality within their societies; with more urbanised
cities and a wealthier middle and working-class, but it seems the increase in
population hinders these two countries.
All in all, David
Smith has written a book about China and India that is very unlike every other
book about these nations. Smith not only manages to portray the history of
these nations and the causes of their economic growth but also to offer ten
ways in which these countries may change the world or not!
