Asia isnt rising, and America aint setting soon

Over at Foreign Policy, Minxin Pei writes about the rise of "Chindia" and the decline of America:

Don't believe the hype about the decline of America and the dawn of a new Asian age. It will be many decades before China, India, and the rest of the region take over the world, if they ever do.

These are my feelings too. I hope to visit China in 2010. India, I am convinced, is more a paper elephant than a real one. This is a country that does not even systematic trash collection, or storm water drainage, and with almost 400 million poor. I am reminded of the old SNL skit: Dukakis points to Bush and remarks something like, "I can't believe I am losing to this guy." Dukakis lost, but I don't see the US losing to Chindia.

A few months ago, the Economist noted this:

To make a serious dent in poverty, India needs to keep up economic growth of around 8% a year. In the medium term that should not be too difficult. More impressive even than the success of India’s best companies is the zest for business shown by millions of Indians in dusty bazaars and slum-shack factories. They are truly entrepreneurs. It is no coincidence, as is often noted, that Indians have prospered everywhere outside India.

But India’s task remains daunting. Some 65% of Indians live on agriculture, which accounts for less than 18% of GDP. Shifting them to more productive livelihoods—and so reducing poverty—would be hard even if the number of people of working age was not growing so fast. Roughly 14m Indians are now being added to the labour market each year, and that number is rising. Half of India’s people are under 25 and 40% under 18 (see chart 2). They cannot all work for Infosys. Indeed, because of India’s historic underinvestment in education, many are not obviously skilled at anything. By one estimate, which may be optimistic, only 20% of job-seekers have had any sort of vocational training. If India cannot find employment for this lot, poverty will not be reduced and India may face serious instability.

I liked the following lines by Pei--a wonderfully insightful play with words:

Dictatorships are good at concealing the problems they create while democracy is good at advertising its defects.