Next few decades would be interesting. China definitely had the upper hand in industrialisation with little to no opposition to its policies and infrastructure infrastructure projects. It still has it. But, it seems they have firm belief in tightening their rein. India, on the other hand, while at least a decade behind, is a less restrictive system by design. If it takes few steps right, India could be a less frightening alternative for future investments.

India is a fragmented country and Modi has to win another term impressively to get any kind of "true" reforms. Even if he succeeds, its the South and West leading the economy and Hindi heartland playing catch-up in spite of being political and population center.

India will develop unevenly Gujarat, Maharashtra, TN, AP will forge ahead. The interior will have lesser impressive growth.

As long as India periphery is culturally diverse from Hindi core, India is not going to get anywhere. It will grow and medium pace and will make it to middle income in 2040, but nothing stellar.

> As long as India periphery is culturally diverse from Hindi core, India is not going to get anywhere.

Could you elaborate on why that might be?

That was a racist comment. He/She was referring to Hindi belt, which contains UP, Bihar, MP, the capital Delhi and likes. Many of the regions are poorest in India. This is commonly referred to as core of India.

Do you whine about every comment you disagree with as racism. Go look at the maps of other countries, you will see a pattern that coasts are richer than hinterland.

Maligning another person's integrity with ease shows your character, or lack there of.

What? That was really not the point. The GP's point was 'As long as India periphery is culturally diverse from Hindi core, India is not going to get anywhere', which is kind of opposite of what you are saying. Also see 'India will develop unevenly Gujarat, Maharashtra, TN, AP will forge ahead' which shows kind of unhappiness from development of some areas.

Heck if India could fix it's power issues and network peering issues they'd catch up pretty darned quick.

I'd love to see India be what China could have been, in terms of being a more liberal, accessible economy. More welcoming to outsiders. Their long-term growth prospects will indeed catch up to or surpass China if they can manage that.

I see no basis in reality for this claim.

China is more open now, than it has been at any point since 1949 - and it continues to liberalize things - just very very slowly.

I think most would agree if was more open under Hu than it is now under Xi. They’re moving in the wrong direction.

Could you give examples? What was better under Hu?

"Liberalize things" can you cite any, because as someone who is familiar with China, Xi's regime is less liberal than ever. The country does welcome foreign investors, but that's about it (and that comes with a lot of restrictions).

"Liberalize things" is an euphemism for "the ruling party reigns supreme and can fuck you over on a whim, but at least the people aren't going hungry like in the former Soviet Union".

> Xi's regime is less liberal than ever.

Is it? Can you give an example of where Hu and Jiang were more liberal than Xi?

Watch the 60 Minutes interview of Jiang by Mike Wallace.

> Xi's regime is less liberal than ever.

How so?

The HK bookstore owners disappearing come to mind.

... Which is exactly how things have worked in mainland China before Xi, under Xi, and will continue to work after Xi.

Xi is not 'less liberal' then his predecessors because he started repressing Hong Kong the exact same way that they repressed the mainland. I mean, this sucks for Hong Kong, but it's not like the CCP had a sudden change of heart under him - it just took them a few years (And a bit of an anti-mainland movement) to start flexing their political muscle in Hong Kong.

While it is true that even under Hu, HK government was pressured to take orders from the mainland government, it is evident that the current regime is less tolerant to any democratic opinions. HK government is forced to implement the "National Anthem Law", and is planning (I believe still a rumor, but most likely the truth) to pass the controversial Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23.

At least during Hu's time there was still some minimum open channel (advocated by Chief Tsang) between the democrats and the mainland government. Now, there is none. There is no compromise on anything coming from mainland.

There is absolutely no flex under Xi's regime. I used to be quite pro-mainland myself, but in recent years I have switched my position after seeing how the mainland government is overreaching the One Country Two System.

"Hong Kong is being repressed" does not mean that Xi is meaningfully less liberal, overall.

How has Xi changed life for citizens of mainland China - the 99.5% of the population that does not live in Hong Kong? How has it become more authoritarian for them?

Every time I've asked this question, the answer has always involved Hong Kong - as if it is representative of China as a whole.

Nobody considers Puerto Rico to be representative of the rest of the United States, or Gibraltar to be representative of the rest of the United Kingdom. Hong Kong is, in a similar vein, a poor litmus test.

And they were released and allowed to tell their story.

If this incident happened any time before Xi, would the outcome have been the same?

Why registered a new account to comment on this? You can't be serious right? They told a story based on a script. Sorry, I cannot trust someone who just created a new account to make a comment like this.

I'm not asking you to trust me.

I'm asking you a question.

OP was saying that Xi is more liberal than his predecessors.

You said "Xi's regime is less liberal than ever."

So my question then is how would his predecessors handle the Hong Kong booksellers?

And they were released and allowed to tell their story.

If this incident happened any time before Xi, would the outcome have been the same?

They were released because the mainland government was forced to explain why the owners were arrested (but a lot of people believe they were kidnapped). In particular, one of the owners is a British citizen.

While pro-mainland argued that the owners were arrested lawfully, the truth is not.

> It was widely believed that the booksellers were detained in mainland China, and in February 2016 Guangdong provincial authorities confirmed that all five had been taken into custody in relation to an old traffic case involving Gui Minhai.

How could all five be detained in relation to an old traffic case? Most importantly, there was no evidence of these owners leaving HK, so how did they end up in China? All five of them? Plotting against mainland? Why would a traffic case warrant this kind of arrest? Let's face it, if this was a local traffic incident in U.S., there would be no manhunt at this scale.

So are you saying that Xi's predecessors would have handled the situation in a more "liberal manner?"

Really? VPNs banned, Skype banned (recently), and in Xinjiang province, forced installation of backdoors. China has the largest surveillance state of any country internally now under Xi, things have gotten far more locked down since he became President.

Corruption is still endemic, as is natural in dictatorships. It's punished very publically when it's revealed, but that's likely to be the tip of the iceberg.

> China is a well run country, but most countries seem that way with 5%+ economic growth YoY.

What most people don't seem to understand is that China's growth is largely based on the fact that it started off, very recently, from such a low baseline.

Big percentage increases are a lot easier when you go from nothing, that doesn't mean you'd want to be a country that recently started from nothing.

> it’s slowly becoming a prison of 1.3 billion people that is gently closing its maws on them.

China has a long and established history of replacing governments that are unfair to their people. It's just, why would you overthrow a government bringing in so much economic growth. Once that growth slows down their government will get away with less civil rights violations.

The Chinese government is directly drawing its legitimacy from the betterment of the Chinese population and this seems to be also the government’s own understanding of the situation.

> China is a well run country

While I generally agree with your point, I don't know if I accept this premise. Would citizens in Tibet agree, for example? Hong Kong?

"Well run" is so wide as to be meaningless without qualifying it. Economy? Environment? Human rights? Life expectancy? Happiness? There are an endless number of metrics. China certainly would do well on some of them, and horribly on others.

Depends on who you ask. Lots of mainlanders live in HK now. I'd assume most young HK-ers are still against China but if nothing changes slowly the HK will be assimilated and mainstream opinion will align more with mainland Chinese as time goes on.

> but if nothing changes slowly the HK will be assimilated and mainstream opinion will align more with mainland Chinese as time goes on

With due respect, that's a prediction without a basis, not evidence or an argument.

It's actually my opinion. I'm not claiming it is a provable fact. It is just what I think might happen in next 50 years let's say.

HK has been independent for a long time and been given back to China quite recently so I think 100 years from now if it stays as part of China it would be much less independent.

For example, take a look at Kaliningrad which is completely Russian now. Or other parts of Europe which were assimilated when taken over by bigger nations/states.

Or you could look at ex-Yugoslavian states, Catalonia, Scotland. Kaliningrad is one Russian example, but you also have the ~14 countries that used to be part of the USSR and chose independence. Things can swing either way, even after prolonged periods of integration. For HK it will depend on how much of a separate "Hong Kong" identity can survive.

Yes, and the former Soviet republics have all either remained in the Russian sphere of influence or have moved aggressively into the Western one. Either way, the simplicity of this “choosing independence” idea conceals a considerably more complicated and delicate reality that more closely resembles the grandparent poster’s argument. :-)

This is fascinating: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad

Though in Kaliningrad's case the original inhabitants were evicted.

Yes. Also see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliningrad_question

It's completely hypothetical but there are some people arguing it should be returned to Germany as it used to be German for many centuries before.

It’s very possible. Especially if the HKers move away. Funny, the doom and gloom predicted for 1997 did come eventually, just 20 years later.

How was HK independent when their leaders were directly appointed by the British government?

I think, in context, the meaning was that HK was, for a long time, independent of China.

Go on with your science fiction plot. "In reality" it's not like that at all. Have you ever been to China?

China is NOT well run. Life is NOT good. The growth is FAKE 7% every year.

There was a very recent event happening in Beijing kindergarten regarding sexual abuses....and the authorities CLAMPED DOWN ON THE MEDIA and DENIED IT TOOK PLACE. http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/rumors-11292017123013....

Why do you think the rich and the intellectuals are fleeing the country? Polluted air, polluted water, polluted food, hidden poverty, censorship, police state, the list goes on and on....

Would you please not rant here, let alone on nationalistic topics, and please not use all-caps for emphasis? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I've spent the better part of my last few months in China, Beijing and Shanghai specifically. China just speed-ran the industrial revolution at 10x the size of the US and is about to surpass us in the next era of energy, renewable energy.

Beijing pollution is still bad. But it's 1/2 of where it was at 4 years ago, and will likely be non-existent in the next 10 years.

Yeah, I'm with you on this one. Most westerners' impressions of China are 10 years behind. There's always been a ton of, "Just wait until the sky falls China won't be prepared" doom saying but as a controlled economy they've become the largest producer of green energy in the world, and are racing to produce the first general A.I.

It's finals season in college so of course I just wrote an essay about this whole thing. I have 3 points to make;

1. I think people need to think of this in the historical context. China has always been closed to the West. The only time they really "opened up" it was because they were forced to after the opium wars, and they lost much of their sovereignty to European spheres of influence that ultimately wrecked them economically. Being closed has historically worked for them and not being so hasn't, so is it such a surprise they want to remain closed?

2. Economically it makes tonnes of sense to do this, and to be honest, I believe that's the main reason they're doing it (more so than to stop criticism's of the party or try to hide stuff). They're beating the West at their own game. Their country has so many people they don't need international markets; China has more people than Europe and North America combined!

France, for example, will likely never get it's own Facebook, Uber or Amazon because Facebook, Uber and Amazon are free to operate there, and as long as these big players hang around (which they will, indefinitely) there will be little space for a competing product to develop. This means France,

- Will have tech startups, but never with "Silicon Valley" level size or growth.

- These services in France will be highly dependant on USA policy

- Most importantly, there will be less incentive for certain types of engineering to grow in France. Like, will France ever have a hub for self-driving car research if there's no French Uber/Lyft/etc? Will it ever have as many self-driving car specialists? If there are engineers interested in this, they will most likely come to the US and work here.

China is protecting itself from brain/idea/high-skilled-job-drain by ensuring local alternatives grow within its borders. It wants to be a tech hub, and this is really the best if not only way to do it when it comes to software tech.

3. Stability. We might call it censorship and control, and we might be right, but especially after the Russian involvement in the USA's latest presidential elections and how easy it was for them to reach their audience online [1], do they not have reason to be paranoid? It's in the interest of Russia to have Trump as president, and, tbh, to split the American people and have in-fighting. And apparently it's not hard for them to make this happen in this connected world. Propaganda can come from both within, and outside.

I'm not trying to say that this is the best approach or that everyone should do this, but there's definitely more to it than "China is evil and wants to brainwash people isolating them from the outside world". Information can definitely get in and out of China; I think the historical, economic and defensive reasons make more sense in explaining China's approach. They're just being protectionist.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/30/facebook-...

You make some compelling arguments. I’d be curious to see the rest of your essay. Have you published it somewhere?

Oh, it was just an expression for a super-long comment; I didn't write an actual essay! Though maybe I should actually expand on these arguments and write up an essay to post on Medium or something at some point. I'll keep it in mind (:

Polluted air, polluted water, polluted food, hidden poverty, blah, blah, ... and yet China's life expectancy is only 3 year shorter than America's (76 vs 79), and China's population is 4 times as bigger as America's. I will have to say, good job Chinese government!

Asian Americans (similar genetics) have a life expectancy of 87 years, that’s 11 years more.

Probably due to the trading all Chinese diet. Which has very little to do with the communist party, who are a very recent development.

traditional Chinese diet. Thanks autocorrect.

Those sure are a lot of sensationalist claims.

Can you provide evidence for your "FAKE" 7% YoY growth statistic? I know plenty of traders & Americans doing business in China who'd disagree with you.

I understand why people would flee -- the pollution is insane. But still, by all measures I've see the economic growth is quite real.