In the New York Review of Books, economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen writes about the historical interactions between India and China and their relevance for the development of the two countries today. While the two countries’ Buddhist connections have been widely studied, Sen writes, “religion is only one part of the much bigger story of Sino-Indian connections during the first millennium. A broader understanding of these relations is greatly needed, not only for us to appreciate more fully the history of a third of the world’s population, but also because the connections between the two countries are important for political and social issues today. ” He goes on to show how both countries have learned from and influenced each other in terms of trade, education, mathematics and science, public health, and politics – and how they could continue to do so today. The full article is here.
This article is especially relevant in light of a recent IHT article posted on CDN about the potential convergence of the Indian and Chinese economic models, which concludes: “A more India-like China and a more China-like India – that’s how the two growth models may ultimately fuse. ”
