This article seems to completely miss the significant compounding effect of real growth over 13 years.
China liberalized their economy in the 70s: 1976 Mao dies -> Cultural revolution ends -> 1978 Deng Xiaoping launches 'Reform & Opening Up'.
India liberalized their economy in the 90s: 1991 Rao and Singh come to power -> eliminate tariffs, dismantle the License Raj.
The difference is at least that of compounded growth over time. At 7% real growth, in 13 years an economy gains about 2.4x. In PPP terms, China's economy is about 2.4x India's [1].
Additional factors to consider are that China liberalized more aggressively through state directed experimentation, and India liberalized more gradually, and within a democratic legal system. Also, on the Chinese side there were periods of slowdown (1989, others), and on the Indian side the economy would have been about 20% larger but for the right-wing/fascist policies of the BJP government [2][3]. But policy failures on both sides are probably a wash, bringing us to today's gap.
Hmm, despite the 13 years head start, turns out in terms of absolute and PPP GDP India and China seemed to have been neck-to-neck until ~1990, after which China really took off.
Comments
This article seems to completely miss the significant compounding effect of real growth over 13 years.
China liberalized their economy in the 70s: 1976 Mao dies -> Cultural revolution ends -> 1978 Deng Xiaoping launches 'Reform & Opening Up'.
India liberalized their economy in the 90s: 1991 Rao and Singh come to power -> eliminate tariffs, dismantle the License Raj.
The difference is at least that of compounded growth over time. At 7% real growth, in 13 years an economy gains about 2.4x. In PPP terms, China's economy is about 2.4x India's [1].
Additional factors to consider are that China liberalized more aggressively through state directed experimentation, and India liberalized more gradually, and within a democratic legal system. Also, on the Chinese side there were periods of slowdown (1989, others), and on the Indian side the economy would have been about 20% larger but for the right-wing/fascist policies of the BJP government [2][3]. But policy failures on both sides are probably a wash, bringing us to today's gap.
[1] https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDP_RPCH@WEO/OEMDC/...
[2] https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/...
[3] https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/ill-conceived-demo...
Hmm, despite the 13 years head start, turns out in terms of absolute and PPP GDP India and China seemed to have been neck-to-neck until ~1990, after which China really took off.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?end=2001...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?end=2... (no data available before 1990 apparently)