Pranab Bardhan (Extracted from "China, India Superpower? Not so Fast!" YaleGlobal Online, 25 October 2005)

"Every day, countless commentators prophesize the ascendance of the world's next superpowers, China and India, the two 'Asian giants' shaking off their ancient slumber and rising to the call of the 21st century. According to popular punditry, their place in the firmament of globalization's success stories is already guaranteed. A much more complicated picture belies the rosy visions of optimists. In China, rural and urban inequality grows at alarming rates, stirring unrest amongst those hundreds of millions who remain impoverished. In fact, China, responsible for only 6 percent of world trade, has actually lost manufacturing jobs in the past ten years. Meanwhile, India's much-vaunted hi-tech sector accounts for less than one quarter of one percent of the country's labor force. In short only patience and struggle -- not destiny -- can guide India and China to the level of superpowers."

[Ed I have a simple (simplistic?) response to this which, nevertheless, is quite true. The brains of those who live in the north-east corner of Asia -- Korea, Japan and China -- are larger than those of Indians, Europeans or Americans. If you overlay all their respective IQ distribution curves on one another, most of the IQs of all countries' populations are similar, but, at the tail-end where IQs of 140+ and geniuses occur, the N-E Asians produce about 5-10 times as many per capita. China's future will be traumatic no doubt, but then so was England's during the 18th and 19th centuries when it, too, needed regiments to keep down demonstrations by the poor during industrialisation and the beginnings of prosperity.]