The Myth of Chindia

Whether or not China and India succeed in the arduous task of strengthening national unity, the development of Asia’s two giants will do much to determine the world’s outlook in this century. In Gravity Shift: How Asia’s New Economic Powerhouses Will Shape the Twenty-First Century, University of Toronto economist Wendy Dobson argues that both giants still face difficult reforms, despite double-digit growth. In the case of China, the growth miracle of the last decades, mainly the result of injecting foreign capital into the cheap domestic labour market, was the easy part. The country will now have to make its growth more balanced and sustainable. As if this were not enough, India is just starting its industrialization process and might soon turn into a formidable competitor. But India faces severe tests of its own, with continued population growth and dominance of an unproductive agricultural sector being two of the most glaring.

Dobson summarizes the...