Combined, India and China account for nearly 40% of the world’s population. Fueled by turbo-charged growth, they are both consolidating their positions as central actors in the international economy. Inevitably, their economic heft will be accompanied by political influence. China is pursuing economic alliances everywhere from Southeast Asia to Latin America; India may well soon have a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Taken together, India’s and China’s rise to prominence is the great story of our time…
Yet much as one might hope that Sino-Indian meetings were something like a graduate seminar on development economics, it’s plain that the two nations could one day end up as rivals.