Though nationalism is on the rise in India, it is still a very fractured society, with a strong emphasis on autonomy of groups to make their own "rules", treating the state as a weak actor. The quality of education at all levels is shockingly poor (specially in science and technology) and no way ready to produce any kind of revolution.
While India will make painfully slow progress in the physical sense (infrastructure), it is very unlikely to follow the Chinese model. Sadly India will remain fractured (or de-centralized, if you want to put a positive spin).
If you have been to India, you will know the pervasiveness of "status quo". Things are so broken, hard and complex that it does not make sense to even start doing something.
Yes, I'm aware that India is a single country, while Europe wasn't. But with the right amount of autonomy, you end up with the same conditions, and it's not too different in practice.
Also these states (or ancient / medieval kingdoms in them) have rarely been "at war" with each other. Until recently, India was sparsely populated and it was easy the "migrate" to another land to establish your kingdom rather than fight with your brother or cousin.
If you are interested, Francis Fukuyama [1] has a very interesting theory that says that India has been held together by its society and not its state. Multiple waves of invasion have not fundamentally altered the texture of the society, parts of the new culture have been slowly assimilated in it, often forcing the invaders to adapt to their new home.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Political_Order
[0] http://www.personal.ceu.hu/corliss/CDST_Course_Site/Readings...
Some argue that China will do the same thing, but it's just as likely the elites continue to hoard most of the benefits of this development and it stays closed off. Trading personal freedoms for economic development is temping and very scary because it's tempting.
Ha-joon Chang was not advocating to trade personal freedom for economic development; he was explaining what really transpired, contrary to the official narrative on economic development.
It does look like an interesting paper. Thanks.
Most people won't complain about personal freedoms as long as their QOL is improving rapidly.
That this whole system has worked so well for 30 years completely undermines the entire basis of western macroeconomics and is the equivalent of telling a traditionally trained economist that the earth orbits the sun while they believed the opposite. It just does not compute and they can't even wrap their heads around it. Thus they keep predicting an imminent economic collapse every years even though they've been wrong for more than 25 years.
In a way China is subsidizing goods for the most of the world. The outcome is the kind of political problems this is causing in most countries.
It should be interesting to see how it develops when the economic eventually slows down and China is no longer the cheap manufacturing park of the world.
25y is nothing. Japan went like that for 40y, from the end of WW2 to laye 80s. Until it stopped and never recovered since. Fortunately they stopped at a high income level.
A more interesting history is that of Argentina. It was an export powerhouse that went from being a poor Spanish colony in early 1800s to having a per capita income as high as Germany or France in 1920s. After the crash all went downhill and income levels are back to mid levels.
Checkout Chinese provinces lying about inflating 25-30% of revenue, overstating their constant 7% gdp growth, debt ratio of over 300%, massive capital outflow, their own economists warning of a crash, and many others To see just how bad their crash will be
Huh? No they haven't. Especially since Japan was still crashing in the early 90s, it was hardly an established precedent by then.
> That's because money is electronically printed by the government and given to banks in exchange for bad loans on a regular basis.
Japan did the same thing, it led to zombie companies and a lost decade.
> There is no debt default crisis. The banks just keep lending and no government debt is created like it would be in America if the government wanted to do the same thing.
You see how this can't work forever, right? Also, if SOE's are publicly owned and their loans are implicitly guaranteed by the government, how is that not considered government debt?
> Thus they keep predicting an imminent economic collapse every years even though they've been wrong for more than 25 years.
It hasn't been 25 years, and whatever, China has crashed a few times since the early 90s. I remember seeing half completed buildings in Tianjin in 1999 just standing out as husks.
I know, I know, you think "its different this time" or "its different for china", but its all BS in the end, because it never is.
At any rate, that's beside my point, which is that (whether or not they're useful) the existence of huge SOEs by definition isn't classical capitalism, no?
They became successful after getting more individualist.
The chase after the buck, cult of success and celebrities, car-heavy cities. Also cars as status symbols.
The concentration of power in the central government isn't really that visible.
I agree with you second claim. There's recently really a strange deluge of anti-Chinese comments, even here on HN. My guess it stems from ignorance.
Model of what?
China does have the advantage that any dictatorship has: the country goes on any direction with full force.
Of course, it's all at the expense of the individual, their rights, liberty and life.
The benevolent dictator is only benevolent until he isn't.
Lol sure it works....until you're one of the citizen being tortured by the government. I can't believe how greedy these scientists are. As if Einstein should have worked for the Nazis.
"China 'holding at least 120,000 Uighurs in re-education camps'"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/25/at-least-12000...
"In China, the Brutality of ‘House Arrest’" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/opinion/in-china-the-brut...
"Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Dissident Who Won Nobel While Jailed, Dies at 61" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/world/asia/liu-xiaobo-dea...
"Report: China still harvesting organs from prisoners at a massive scale" https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/asia/china-organ-harvesting/i...
And yeah it sucks that China can do terrible things to its citizens, but I still think most of the negative sentiment toward China is economic. The sample size is small but successful empires from history always value their own success over the lives of foreigners. In that sense it doesn't matter if China is 'evil' or not - 'we' are not Chinese - it only matters if they are powerful enough that their self interest can cause significant harm.