The Rise of Asia

When we have discussions about the macro-economic world, 2 topics that commonly surface are:

a) The rising power of Asia, mostly China/India

b) compare and contrast between China and India.

The next question that naturally comes up is - "given a choice between these 2 giants, where would you invest in? ". And very often (as we commonly see in business problems at school) the typical answer is - "It Depends!".

Nevertheless, knowing what we know now, and keeping a few assumptions as is, there are a set of economists who state that the combined economies of India and China would account for 50% of the global GDP by 2050.. yes 50%. And this was true in history until the mid-1800s, when imperialism took over the world. Will history repeat itself? Many people believe it will, if we dont have major wars of catastrophe. I keep my fingers crossed.

Recently, Hans Rosling, a Swedish doctor and self-proclaimed lover of India, was at TEDIndia, held at the Infosys campus in Mysore (my work location for 2 years). With great animosity, he graphs the global economic growth since 1858 and goes on to predict the exact date that India and China will outstrip the US!! very insightful... to say the least!