All this talk of Indian rising/shinning is only benfitting upper class. Deep rooted caste system is not allowing lower cast to participte in the GDP rise.

“At times the Communist Chinese leaders seem to be obsessed with the notion that they are being threatened and encircled…[an] imaginary, almost pathological notion that the United States and other countries around its borders are seeking an opportunity to invade mainland China and destroy the [Peiping] Peking regime. How much Peiping’s ‘fear’ of the United States is genuine and how much it is artificially induced…only the Chinese Communist leaders themselves know.”
http://tinyurl.com/yeohm4g

Skunk cabbage by any other name..

2009, manmohan singh….
tinyurl.com/yho69kf
tinyurl.com/2ng3ct

From: Unicef (http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/india_statistics.html)
Total adult literacy rate (%), 2000–2007* – 66%
Youth (15–24 years) literacy rate, 2000–2007*, male 87%
Youth (15–24 years) literacy rate, 2000–2007*, female 77%

A bit different from what you quoted, eh?

I’m always amazed at people like John Walsh. India wasn’t granted independence, and Wikipedia is not a good source for information. Let’s start with the following:

1) Gandhi failed – no he didn’t. India gained freedom through his political movement. There’s little real evidence to support the quote about British troops not wanting to supress India. This is a common trope put out by British historians who don’t want to admit that India brought about the end of their empire. After all, they have to save face some how. Your just quoting British revisionism in Pilger’s work. There are a number of different historical views of what happened at Partition. A competent historian or academic would acknowledge each of these, consider the evidence, pros, and cons for each view, and make a decision (which you didn’t). Many, including myself and other historians, believe the British brought about partition because they believed in divide and conquer. This was firmly routed in the notion that a nation had to be ethnically and religiously homogeneous to be “modern.” This nation state view was common of most Western powers. It’s bad practice to quote one or two sources, especially when one of those is Wikipeda. One of Pilger’s problems is that he uses the technique of “backhanded praise” when commenting on Indian history. Gandhi had little to do with bringing about Partition, same with Nehru. The problem lays with the British, Mountbatten, and Jinnah.

2) Your statistics are flawed. You should look at a variety of indicators, not just ones that suit your arguments. For example, consider these:

Freedom House Freedom Index:
China – not free
India – free
(Source: Freedom house – http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=15)

Foreign Policy’s Failed States Index 2009 (Higher is worse)
China – 84.6 (rank – 57)
India – 77.8 (rank – 87)

I could go on with the reporter’s without borders ranking, etc. These point to the fact that you probably aren’t getting the full picture. China is a dictatorship. Verifying information is going to be tough, it not impossible.

Oh boy in control of an out of control system and damn the WMD’s full speed ahead. In Iran who is in control of the weapons the religions leaders or the military guard or both. In Israel who is in control of the WMD’s the religions leaders the military both and how much influence does the greatest nation on Earth have in this little game on a mote of dust granted a miracle of the Universe almost alway omitted.

I note, tho, that even in internet media, ?all posters and journalists avoid [?deliberately] to cast the widest look.
Some scribes dwell ?exclusively on finances; others on economy only or wars only, etc.
Structures of societies and governance; constitutions on which governances rest; discrepancy in politico-military-economic power btwn people and lands; religions; basic human rights, etc., for many posters and journalists do not exist let alone existing in a connected way to everything else.

To master class, this is sonatas by motzart, tchaikovski, bethoven, et al.
Survival instinct that push people into making even wrong choices such as industrialiazing their economy and which may actually diminish their chances of survival, is almost alway omitted. How can one proffer an illumination of what goes on, by just leaving this one fact out?
USSR and now China, are good examples of emulating clazy euros and amers.

Never in history have some ethnoses and lands been as endangered as now. Which probably wld cause such lands to acquire wmd which may one day bring on what most people fear: the end of people.
I think that chinese evaluate with certainty that world plutos wld never allow china to develop without chinese fearing of being attacked or that i wld be one day attacked and dismebered.
tnx

We can play the polyanna role and think all of this will just cure itself in a way that avoids deep and global tragedy. Or we can look at it with a given what we know, how can such a tragedy possible be avoided?

But certainly I needn’t remind you that the US (and some NATO members) are at war and have been for 15+ years!!

Wars, conficts, stand-offs are there NOW. This is not a prediction. However there are ways to mitigate these and the China/India pact is a perfect example.

As far as Chinese economy/way of life being a kind of creation of the West/Japan, there is little doubt that capital has come from those quarters. But this has been foreign corporate capital; not US or Wester aid per se to nation/economically build up China. Clearly different than military invasion/occupation you’ll agree, no doubt.

But this capital invasion is part of the global economic model. It is a dilemma that has been known for some time. Off-shore your manufacturing to low labor costs, reduced environmental constraints and watch your profits grow.

But today, China is much more in the driver’s seat. The US is a military might that has lost every military engagement its entered since the end of WWII. This has drained the US treasury. And what have China and India been doing in the interim?

China has a dilemma. How to reduce its dependence/interdependence on the West/US when it has become an albatros.

As I said this is a deadly embrace.

The bottom line is not conflict over energy – which will take an enormous amount of policy deliberation to avoid – BUT the irretrievable damage that is entailed in the continued (un)economical model of growth.

Certainly outcomes are not clear. Technologies are as much a dilemma as the current trajectory. Technologies rarely solve a problem without producing multiple – frequently worse – conditions/problems in its wake. A simple example is the new push for nuclear energy as a solution to greenhouse gas…ignoring the multitude of problems that emerge.

Max,

But you forget a very important fact whic is whether it is Chinese growth or pollution or getting more resources , it is done in service and with the complete approval of the western/japanese capitalists.
The western/japanese capitalists transfered many of their manufacturing plants to China. So, how these plants will operate and expand and increase production without the need for more energy, raw materials and the resulting increase in pollution.
Please, don’t look to China as an isolated unit, China for now is completely integrated with the West especially the US.
So, any solution to the pollution or resources problem has to be global in scope and most likely it will require drastic changes in the way people live and think, which I am not very optimistic about!
What will happen next , is not wars but billions of people will be destitute suffering from increased repression. And of course global warming is looming!!
But who knows!!? There might be a technological break throughs in the future, as I said will are living in a very rapidly changing world and predicting the future is very prone to errors.

I think imperialism is what happens when a power needs resources that someone else has. In other words, the power needs something it doesn’t have, or is limited to. China has coal, but it is reduced quality and with the expected growth, it will deplete. So what does it do? It cuts deals with usually weaker entities, taking over the means to extract, and paying off the entity – no different than what has happened throughout the ages with imperial powers.

This is not trade, in the normal sense, but a demand made of a supplier who has resources needed. In other words, it is different than an export of one nation’s goods/services with another nation. And all of the agreements are premised on a demand which will be depleted with time, not a product that can be rightfully commoditized and valued.

We need to look objectively at the resources that lead to head to head competition.

India and China have a strategic partnership. In 2006, Prsident Hu hammered out with Prime Minister Singh and signed a ten-point joint resolution. This is a collaborative effort to explore and obtain the necessary resources (much of it natural gas and petroleum) throughout the globe.

This is serious stuff. Pay attention. Their oil companies are state-owned. They are both on a binge to grow grow grow…

And where does this put the West, Japan and USA?

liz,
That WAS true in the past, but NOW capital is global and hirarichal. The Chinese capital is subservient to the US capital. Chinese capital has almost trillion dollars invested in US Treasury notes and real estate.
That doesn’t mean there is no competition and friction between capitalists, of course there is but not on the national level, but on the individual level and mostly get resolved not by war but finance ( including financial tricks and fraud ) a.k.a the current financial crisis and stark monoplistic policies and hard edge compition and the losers most of the time retire with tens of millions of dollars to their posh estates and live happily ever after!!
That is the way I see it in the foreseeabl future, but predicting the future is most of the time wrong and we live in a very rapidly changing world.!