![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"The bitter fact about Indian growth, and what makes it qualitatively different from that in Japan, China, Thailand or Malaysia, is that the overwhelming majority obtains no benefit from it."
(From Independent article about the hidden side of Indian growth).
China in the same breath as Japan?! Are they joking? Someone's bought the Chinese government propoganda. Growth seems to be somewhat better distributed in China than India (thanks to the emphasis on exploiting the cheap labour pool) but beyond the eastern coast there are vast numbers of Chinese who are watching the miracle pass them by. And the environmental catastrophes being wrought are as bad or worse as India.
The difference, of course, is that for all its corruption and inefficiency, India is a democracy and it's a lot harder to hide what goes on. The Chinese government still stage-manages everyone into seeing shiny new buildings and factories--and not the rural peasants working 12 hours a day on slave wages to make all those nice products for us Westerners. Or the villages they've had to leave behind.
(From Independent article about the hidden side of Indian growth).
China in the same breath as Japan?! Are they joking? Someone's bought the Chinese government propoganda. Growth seems to be somewhat better distributed in China than India (thanks to the emphasis on exploiting the cheap labour pool) but beyond the eastern coast there are vast numbers of Chinese who are watching the miracle pass them by. And the environmental catastrophes being wrought are as bad or worse as India.
The difference, of course, is that for all its corruption and inefficiency, India is a democracy and it's a lot harder to hide what goes on. The Chinese government still stage-manages everyone into seeing shiny new buildings and factories--and not the rural peasants working 12 hours a day on slave wages to make all those nice products for us Westerners. Or the villages they've had to leave behind.
(no subject)
I don't really know anything about Thailand or Malaysia, but you are spot on here. By no means do the "overwhelming majority" in China get any sort of sizable benefit from China's economic growth. My impression is that the rising tide is lifting a lot of boats in the coastal provinces; wealth is massively disproportionately distributed there, but then it was before--communist ideals notwithstanding--and is in developed countries as well. But nothing of the sort is happening in large swathes of the interior, though the government is at least attempting to encourage capital investment and growth in some interior provinces.