Gee’s Reviews > The China Wave: Rise of a Civilizational State > Status Update

Third, India’s “soft state” does not allow the country to carry out much-needed institutional reforms or execute with reasonable efficiency many needed reform programs. The state is easily hijacked by various vested interest groups, as shown by the repeated failures in its attempts to handle the problem of slums or implement family planning policies, which, in most cases, hurt India’s overall public interests.

Indian politics is to a great extent marked by the politicization of everything, and consequently it is hardly possible to discuss and tackle issues in an honest and matter-of-fact way.

But 60 years later, the gap between the two Asian giants could not be larger: China’s economy is three times that of India; with less arable land, China’s grain production is 2x that of India; China’s foreign trade volume is four times larger; the average life span in China ten years longer; China’s infant mortality 3 times lower; and India’s economic and financial center Mumbai looks 3 decades behind

Yet the reality is that most Chinese are fair-minded: if you have had good performance in the past, and if you are still working earnestly for the people, they tend to understand you and give you room for improvement. In fact, crises often provide opportunities for consolidating legitimacy.

The Chinese experience since 1978 is often described in the Western media as “economic reform without political reform”. Yet any significant change of the Soviet-type system, as has been the case with China, inevitably entails a considerable reform of its political and administrative system.

The experience of China’s Republican Revolution of 1911 serves to illustrate this point. The Revolution copied the Western political model and the whole country immediately fell into chaos and disintegration, with warlords, each supported by one or a few foreign powers, fighting each other for their own interests, and this is a lesson that we should always bear in mind.

features are (1) a super-large population, (2) a super-vast territory, (3) super-long traditions, (4) a super-rich culture, (5) a unique language, (6) unique politics, (7) a unique society and (8) a unique economy, or simply the “four supers” and “four uniques”