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FWC--Quality of Life: India vs. China
The author is a leftist economist with a Nobel Prize.
"Life expectancy at birth in China is 73.5 years; in India it is 64.4 years. The infant mortality rate is fifty per thousand in India, compared with just seventeen in China; the mortality rate for children under five is sixty-six per thousand for Indians and nineteen for the Chinese; and the maternal mortality rate is 230 per 100,000 live births in India and thirty-eight in China. The mean years of schooling in India were estimated to be 4.4 years, compared with 7.5 years in China. China's adult literacy rate is 94 percent, compared with India's 74 percent according to the preliminary tables of the 2011 census…
"The Chinese leaders, despite their skepticism about the values of multiparty democracy and personal and political liberty, are strongly committed to eliminating poverty, undernourishment, illiteracy, and lack of health care; and this has greatly helped in China's advancement."
Among the ten largest economies in the world, the most important things to note about China, over the past 30 years, are:
1. China has had the best political leaders and they were systematic in learning from the mistakes made during 1960-1980.
2. India, together with America, Brazil, Russia, etc., has had the worst political leaders. Only Germany, among large democracies, has had reasonably good leaders.
3. India has fully implemented the System of the Crooks developed in America during the 1980s.
4. India ranks #1 in Crooks and China ranks last. Most of the growth in America and India has gone to the very wealthy, most of whom are Crooks.
5. Deng Xioping is easily the greatest leader the word has seen. The promises he made to the Chinese people when he proposed his economic reforms not only have been kept, they were met ahead of the schedule. Compared to Deng, Indian political leaders are neech (beneath, untouchable).
When it comes to human institutions labels are meaningless. They primarily serve propaganda of those who are in power. Only those who are blind to the facts can be made to believe that demonocracy is the best political system.
Jas
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Quality of Life: India vs. China
Amartya Sen
The steadily rising rate of economic growth in India has recently been around 8 percent per year (it is expected to be 9 percent this year), and there is much speculation about whether and when India may catch up with and surpass China's over 10 percent growth rate. Despite the evident excitement that this subject seems to cause in India and abroad, it is surely rather silly to be obsessed about India's overtaking China in the rate of growth of GNP, while not comparing India with China in other respects, like education, basic health, or life expectancy. Economic growth can, of course, be enormously helpful in advancing living standards and in battling poverty. But there is little cause for taking the growth of GNP to be an end in itself, rather than seeing it as an important means for achieving things we value.
It could, however, be asked why this distinction should make much difference, since economic growth does enhance our ability to improve living standards. The central point to appreciate here is that while economic growth is important for enhancing living conditions, its reach and impact depend greatly on what we do with the increased income. The relation between economic growth and the advancement of living standards depends on many factors, including economic and social inequality and, no less importantly, on what the government does with the public revenue that is generated by economic growth.
Some statistics about China and India, drawn mainly from the World Bank and the United Nations, are relevant here. Life expectancy at birth in China is 73.5 years; in India it is 64.4 years. The infant mortality rate is fifty per thousand in India, compared with just seventeen in China; the mortality rate for children under five is sixty-six per thousand for Indians and nineteen for the Chinese; and the maternal mortality rate is 230 per 100,000 live births in India and thirty-eight in China. The mean years of schooling in India were estimated to be 4.4 years, compared with 7.5 years in China. China's adult literacy rate is 94 percent, compared with India's 74 percent according to the preliminary tables of the 2011 census.
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