[throwaway5465]

China has grown old before it grew rich. The past decade has been one of a collapsed houehold sector (and birth rate below the already gloomy concensus back in 2010), general deflation, and bright lights and conspicious technology achieved only through throwing government spending at ritzy projects - centrally planned growth and waste. Being unable to escape the domestic security agenda will forever neuter global aspiration, from currency to technology.

India is yet to harmonise widespread organisation.

Relative gaps are smaller, but the persistance of gap is never more entrenched than ever.

That is not a decline. It is however a Great Game, not played with nations but with ideology and where the US and China are quite aligned. That game is less visible until it is seen.

[IAmBroom]

> India is yet to harmonise widespread organisation.

I've always said that if India got a unified national language they would become a nearly instant world power.

Imagine an India where English was mandated in every public school - and every child, regardless of caste (which officially doesn't exist...), attended school. English, because it's more internationally useful than Hindi, and doesn't have the same ethnological competition (Hindi vs Bengali vs Tamil vs <297 others>).

Then imagine that, now that all of India can actually speak to each other, they get their shit together, and build a truly functional national highway system. Top it off with a safe railway system, complete with modern trains. Enough trains that you don't have to ride on top. (OK, I'm starting to dream big.)

One generation later India is a dominant world power. Pakistan is completely fucked, sure, because Delhi will never get over their petty sibling hatred. But India can start power-brokering between all other nations.

[lotsofpulp]

Isn’t English the de facto national language in India? Everyone who can afford to, teaches their kid English.

India’s big problem is lack of natural resources, and lack of clear hierarchy to manage the limited resources (including choosing to screw some people for the greater good). China had the same issue of enormous population relative to natural resources, but it had the clear hierarchy to be able to execute.

[pasttense01]

Natural resources aren't that important anymore. Look at Singapore with essentially no natural resources, but a high standard of living for example. And the U.S. has strong natural resources, but they represent a fairly small portion of the economy.

[lotsofpulp]

A highly educated small island city state protected by larger countries due to the very nature that it doesn’t have anything to take is not at all comparable to feeding, moving, and sheltering 1.5B people.

[rchaud]

India is divided by its caste system and religion to a much greater extent than it is by language. Successive governments have put far more effort into dominating its Muslim and Sikh minorities than implementing a high - quality universal education system that harmonizes a base level of skill across the population. The most educated state in the country is the Communist-run Kerala where the people speak Malayalam.

India is similar to the USSR in that it buckets disparate languages, religions and cultures into a single nation with inevitable separatist tendencies.

[smallmancontrov]

The "centrally planned growth is hollow and doomed" narrative doesn't seem to fit China like it fit the USSR. Did the USSR ever make 80% of the stuff in your home?

As for making friends, the US empire is highly atypical in its "friendliness" and it's entirely plausible that its successor will revert to the mean.