When President Trump rolled out the red carpet for Xi Jinping, some pundits saw it as America foolishly acknowledging its main competitor as a peer, signaling a "G-2" world dominated by Washington and Beijing.
For developing-world democracies like India, the threat from China's rise goes beyond geopolitics. Beijing and many pro-Beijing commentators portray China's authoritarian government as inherently superior to democracy.
India is a tempting subject for comparison. But while China has outpaced its southern neighbor economically, technologically and militarily, that doesn't make authoritarianism a superior system.
"The simplistic view is that China has grown faster than India because China is an autocracy," says Yasheng Huang, a professor of global economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I just don't see any evidence for that."
Scholars have long seen the broader significance of the economic race between China and India. The communist takeover of China in 1949 came two years after Indian independence from Britain. The world's two most populous nations saw themselves as ancient civilizations humiliated by industrialized Western powers.
"Given the present role of these two nations in Asia and their strategic importance in the world, it seems likely that the relative degree of success attributed to the two development efforts will determine the part they will be able to play in international affairs," Wilfred Malenbaum, an MIT economist, wrote in a 1956 paper. He argued that the winner of the contest would help determine whether other newly independent countries would "be a force primarily for or against the spread of free and open societies throughout the world."
Milton Friedman, an early critic of India's failed experiment with state planning, wrote in a 1963 essay: "We have rightly regarded India as a key country in the struggle for the uncommitted nations of the world, as the major counterforce to the influence being exerted in the Far East by China."
China initiated market-based economic reforms in 1978. According to the International Monetary Fund, in 1980 China and India were neck and neck in nominal per capita gross domestic product, with China at $310 and India at $275. India's growth accelerated after 1991, when it also began economic reforms, but it hasn't kept pace with China. The IMF estimates China's per capita GDP last year at about $14,000, more than five times India's roughly $2,700. In purchasing power parity terms, which accounts for goods and services typically costing less in poorer countries, Chinese per capita GDP of about $29,500 was 2.5 times India's $12,000.
China's system looks attractive at first glance. Deng Xiaoping, the architect of the country's economic reforms, sold his departure from Maoism with aphorisms such as "It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice" and "Let some people and some regions get rich first." He could say such things, the argument goes, because he didn't need to win elections. Indian politicians, by contrast, rarely rise above promising voters freebies or appealing to caste or religion.
China's political system supposedly lets leaders take the long view instead of devising short-term policies with the next election in mind. In India, a project like China's Three Gorges Dam would likely become ensnared in endless lawsuits and protests by civil society groups.
Although democracy has become synonymous at times with bloat and red tape (think of California's high-speed rail project), democratic governments have a stronger record of delivering prosperity -- without brutalizing their people. China's boom is less than 40 years old and shows signs of fading. In per capita GDP terms, China trails the U.S. and has yet to catch up with Japan or South Korea. Mr. Huang points out that the most authoritarian Chinese leaders, including Mao Zedong and Mr. Xi, have a far worse economic record than the relatively liberal Deng and his immediate successors.
Those drawn to authoritarianism believe it will yield sparkling megacities and world-beating companies. But war-torn Myanmar and bankrupt Zimbabwe are examples of where autocratic rule often leads. China still holds lessons for India -- and any democracy. Julian Gewirtz, a China expert at Columbia University, calls the country's economic takeoff "as much a story of bottom-up experimentation and exploration of international ideas as anything else." By embracing meritocracy, China has made its universities world-class. China sees its cities as engines of growth, not merely cash cows for rural hinterlands.
But these are arguments for improving Indian democracy -- so it may one day offer the developing world a better example than China.
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