China vs. India

Here's an interesting excerpt a review in Foreign Policy of the book, Smoke and Mirrors: An Experience of China, written by the first Chinese-speaking Indian journalist in Beijing:

Whether it’s the breathless pace of China’s economy versus India’s slower, more measured growth, or China’s communist political system rated against India’s complicated democracy, the two countries are endlessly dissected in relation to one another. Yet amid all the hand-wringing over which country is “beating” the other in their race to industrialize, one simple question sums up very pointedly the debate over which one is making life better for its citizens. It’s a question few dare to ask in polite circles: If you were born today, would you rather be Chinese or Indian?

Delhi-born Pallavi Aiyar, the first Chinese-speaking Indian journalist based in Beijing and author of an engaging new book about the two countries, takes on the charged question. The best option, she contends, is to be a high-caste Indian man. His political freedom would certainly outweigh the economic opportunities of any Chinese citizen, she argues. But if that weren’t possible, she’d choose to be a wealthy Chinese woman, because she wouldn’t be as constrained as her Indian counterparts by low literacy rates and limits on female participation in the public sphere. If she had to be poor, she’d go with China. An Indian latrine cleaner may get to vote, she says, but a Chinese one is far less likely to be viewed as completely subhuman.