View Single Post
Old 2009-05-23, 13:34   Link #31
Lathdrinor
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
India is a puzzle. It is one of the most divided societies in the world (along the lines of caste, skin color, language, ethnicity, religion, region, politics, etc.), yet manages to keep itself together. I don't know whether it's really the government form (parliamentary democracy), or the simple acceptance among the populace that this is as good as it gets. Either way, it will be interesting to see what comes out of it, given that India, historically, was not one country until the British came.

As for superpower, I don't think there will be another superpower like the US, at least not in the near future. Economically, both India and China might rise to become giants, but militarily, they don't and won't have the same sort of dominance European empires and the US had for the last five hundred or so years. They'll be able to throw their weight around, to be sure, but subjugate the globe, probably not.

As for demographics, it's not yet clear to me that India's birth rate is a good thing. Certainly, the country's got the food resources to support it (India has *more* arable land than China, despite being much smaller), but a bigger population does not necessarily mean a stronger country. It really depends on India's ability to provide *quality* jobs and education for its people. Failing that, a bigger population could become a burden. Quality, not quantity, is important in this day and age.

As for the pensioners' plight in China, I'd say it's not as bad as people claim. The savings rate of the average Chinese is something like 40-50%. That's a lot of money for rainy days, and I don't necessarily think that the average single child is going to end up having to provide most of the support their parents need in old age (though in rural areas, the shortage of young farmhands vis-a-vis retired farmers might require the government to restructure agriculture). That said, this is one reason why China cannot be depended on to replace the West as the engine of consumption - most of its people cannot afford to spend as much money on luxuries, since they have to save for retirement.

To be more on topic, Tiananmen Square, twenty years on, has unfortunately proved Deng Xiaoping's point - that if the CCP cracked down in 1989, they'll be able to hold on for at least twenty more years. Not only was he right, but it looks as though the CCP will hold on for even longer - maybe another twenty, or more. Capitalism has proved an useful distraction for the average person in China, who now worries less about the government's ideology and more about how he or she's going to make money. The biggest challenges facing the CCP now are corruption, income inequality, and environmental degradation. Going forward will require flexibility, and it's not clear that the CCP is capable of that flexibility. Still, this is a party that's gone from Maoist communism to market capitalism within sixty years of its inception, so who knows.
Lathdrinor is offline   Reply With Quote