China+vs.+India+who’s+winning?

Source: BostonGlobe http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/05/15/china_vs_india_whos_winning/
Date: May 15th, 2011 Article:  The Cold War witnessed a space race and an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. In our own era, the great competition may be the growth race between China and India. In The New York Review of Books, Amartya Sen asks the obvious question: Which country has the better quality of life?  The answer, of course, depends on what you value. India has built a democratic society, and its citizens enjoy tremendous civic freedoms; at the same time, the country is still struggling with economic inequality. In China, prosperity has been more widely shared, but political freedoms have been slow in coming.  On the whole, Sen finds, life in China is better: Life expectancy is longer, child mortality is lower, and the literacy rate is higher. Nearly all Chinese children have received immunizations against diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus; in India, only 66 percent have received them. Democracy matters, of course, in a qualitative way. But, Sen writes, “When we consider the impact of economic growth on people’s lives, comparisons favor China over India.” Moving forward, Sen sees the challenge in democratic India as one of attention. Indians have to keep the political discussion focused on issues of inequality. In China, by contrast, the challenge has to do with accountability. Decisions are made from the top down, and people have little recourse against their government. In both cases, it’s important to look beyond broad measurements like gross national product. Growth has been important, but in the coming decades, politics might be even more so.

In this article, the author is trying to compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages India and China have that another author has said in her book. Through this article, we can see that although Indian has a democratic society, it doesn't have an equitable distribution of income. In contrast, China is the opposite of it. We should expect a smaller Gini coefficient for China than for Indian because its distribution of income is better, but on the other hand political freedom is not as good as India's. Based on the author's analysis of China with life expectancy, child mortality, and literacy rate, we can also expect China's HDI is higher than India's. Not only this, since "nearly all Chinese children have received immunizations against" different diseases, there will be an externality of consumption because the more people receive immunizations, the less people will get infected with it and the diseases won't be contaminated as well. She also believes that China's economic growth is better than India, and not only should we look for economic growth and development, most important we should also start looking for the influence from political power.

Figure 1. A graph showing India's and China's GDP per capita over time.

Definitions: HDI:Human Development Index-An indicator of country's welfare interms of literacy rate, life expectancy and GDP per capita Gini Coefficient:value measuring the inequality of distribution, 0 being most equal and 1 being most unequal Economic Growth: measure the aggregate income of country the economic progress of a country that is only in monetary terms Economic Development: measure of country's welfare

Evaluation: The author of the book says we should look for the influence from the political power, and I agree that we should have some kind of indicator to indicate people's political freedom as well(if it hasn't been created yet). An indicator such as GEM(gender empowerment measure) to a small extent has already included the influence of political freedom to women already but its too generalized since GEM involves many other factors as well. There are so many things that explain economic growth and development so I think its best to be as specific as possible. There are already many indicators that sort of overlap the section of economic growth and economic development that make them vague. so we should try to isolate each factor in order to have a more accurate comparison. As we know, indicators such as GDP do not accurately reflect a country's welfare because it only measure the country in monetary terms. In the end, we are all trying to find a solution to measure a country's growth and development, so in the end I think we will only need 2 indicators, one for economic growth and one for economic development. A better indicator to measure the economic growth of a country will be the genuine progress indicator because it also includes nonmonetary benefits and environmental costs, which will make the measurement more fair. Overall, the author doesn't really give his own evaluation, he is simplying saying what the author Sen has said, I think the article will be much better if he can give some analysis on inequalities among women if he wants to be even more, why this is happening and his personal evaluation on how to approach the problems instead of just stating what another person has said. 