China and India: The two differ in business

as much as they do in politics

1.  China, with 1.3bn people, and India, with 1.1bn, happen to be the world’s most populous nations. Both economies are growing exceptionally fast, and both are increasingly dependent on imports of energy and raw materials.

2.  China started growing earlier and grew faster, India is poorer and the average Indian still has only half as much income as the average Chinese.

3.  China’s population growth will stop in the next two decades, while India will have to find jobs for hundreds of millions of young job seekers as the number of its inhabitants exceeds China’s and heads towards 1.6bn.

4.  Indian governments generally resist reform, prevaricate over investing in infrastructure and – sentimental as they are about a non-existent ideal of rural Indian life – refuse to cater for the tens of millions of rural migrants flooding into the cities.

5.  Foreign investors say the Communist Party still has an ambivalent attitude towards private companies. It regards their main roles as giving support to state-controlled companies and providing employment for millions of workers – which is why light industrial activities such as furniture-making are favoured activities.