Chindia

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Chindia is a portmanteau neologism that refers to China and India together in general, and their economies in particular. The credit of coining the now popular term goes to leading Indian economist and politician Jairam Ramesh.

China and India are geographically proximate, are both regarded as growing countries and are both among the fastest growing economies in the world. Together, they contain about one-third of the world's population. They have been named as countries with the highest potential for growth in the next 50 years in a BRIC report.

The economic strengths of these two countries are widely considered complementary - China is perceived to be strong in manufacturing and infrastructure while India is perceived to be strong in services and information technology. China is stronger in hardware while India is stronger in software. China is stronger in physical markets while India is stronger in financial markets. The countries also share certain historical interactions - the spread of Buddhism from India to China and trade on the Silk route are famous examples.

Indian intellectuals such as Jairam Ramesh and Subramanian Swamy have called for closer co-operation between the two countries.

However, there are also geopolitical differences between China and India that some argue would make this term inappropriate. The effects of the Sino-Indian War of 1962 has meant that relations between the countries have been cautious and slow. While China is a temperate continental state India is confined within the Indian sub-continent and has a tropical climate. Culturally, China is connected to the developed East Asian nations of Japan and South Korea. China's population growth rate is currently low, at 0.58% (2005) and its total population is expected to decline rapidly by 2030, whereas India's population growth rate of 1.4% (2005), if continued, will ensure that it will surpass China as the world's most populous nation by 2030 ^[1]. Their political systems are also vastly different, with China being ruled by a single party and India being the world's largest voting republic. Land reform took place in China in the late 1970s and market reforms began in the 1980s, helping China to become more capitalistic and economically developed than India. Land reforms in India are still stalled by Indian bureaucracy, and other reforms in India have been implemented only since the early 1990s. The commonly-cited complementary nature of China and India's economies is also being questioned as the service sector in China is rapidly growing and threatening to match or overtake India's within a decade, while India's manufacturing sector has seen tremendous growth in recent years.

1 See also
2 Further reading
3 Video
4 External Links
5 References

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

BusinessWeek; August 12, 2005; "Chindia": China and India special feature
Beware the 'Chindia' effect - Mail & Guardian Online
Jairam Ramesh. Making Sense of Chindia: Reflections on China and India. New Delhi, India Research Press, 2005. ISBN 81-87943-95-5
Chindia Lounge, China & India (CHINDIA) Business / Culture / Travel / Outsourcing Resource Blog ChindiaLounge.com by an Asia Business Relations/Marketing Expert.

[edit] Video

Chindia : The next Decade Senior Business Week writer Pete Engardio, credited for having made the Chindia neologism famous, compares the rise of both China and India in this online video conference.