China?s emergence as the third largest economy, by pushing down Germany to the fourth place after revising up the GDP growth figures for 2007, marks yet another milestone in its slow and arduous climb up the global hierarchy of nations. Though it edged out Germany by just $ 0.06 trillion, and even though it is still only around a quarter of the $13.8 trillion US economy, the Chinese prospects are even better as it is still expected to move to the second position by the end of the decade and even overtake the US over the next 20 years if current trends continue. That is not too bad for a country whose national GDP was just about a 16.4% of the size of the US economy less than 60 years back in 1950.
What is however more striking is how India, which was globally ranked only next to China in the 9th position in 1983, with its $ 211 billion economy a third smaller than of its neighbor, has missed out on a great opportunity. Numbers show that the latter half of the eighties was not particularly inspiring for either country whenLatin America emerged as the main driver of growth in the developing countries. While India slipped three rungs to the 12th position, China slipped two rungs down to 10th. In fact it was only in the nineties that the Chinese catapulted far ahead of India, moving up six rungs to the 6th position. In contrast, India?s ranking, which sunk further to 15, after the crisis of the early 90s, only made it to the 13th position by decade end. And the size of the Chinese economy which grew to $1,198 billion became more than double that of the Indian economy, which was just $462 billion. The disparities only worsened in the current decade. While the Chinese economy ranking has further moved up three rungs to the third position by 2007, India?s position first picked by to the 12th rank by 2004 and then dipped a rung each over the next two years to the 14th position in 2006, with India?s growth slipping in the middle of the decade. The only solace is that it swung up once again to the 12 th position in 2007 as growth picked up once again in the latter half of the decade. But by then the $3.2 trillion Chinese economy had grown to almost 3 times that of India.
?p.raghavan@expressindia.com
