Why are the economies of China and India in the news lately?
To begin with, the two nations command attention by sheer dint of population size. With 1.3 billion and 1.1 billion citizens, respectively, China and India are the first and second most populous nations in the world. More important, over the past two decades, both countries have enjoyed remarkably high economic growth rates. Indeed, China has averaged an annual economic growth rate of about nine percent over the past 20 years (10 percent recently), and India has managed about 6 percent. By comparison, the U.S. economy has been growing at a relatively staid three percent annually. To put that in perspective, in 2006 China and the U.S. were responsible for nearly half of all global economic growth. How do the Chinese and Indian economies compare? China today is the world’s second largest economy, after the U.S., and India is the 10th largest. (This is when they’re measured on the basis of purchasing-power parity, a comparison that looks at the relative buying power of each country’s curr
