[arjie]

The comment under does make sense. We have to explain Taiwan, Korea, and Japan as well. If the difference is 1950s actions then Taiwan in particular is unexplained, having diverged in 1949.

Though the cotton mill productivity does challenge the idea that it’s genetics or something inherent. Interesting problem for sure.

[mc32]

According to Lee Kwan Yew[1], apparently he identified two big factors:

India's diversity is not its strength -whereas China's relative homogeneity allows for easier governance(no contending non-pluralistic factions)

India's federation is not its strength either. India's central government, unlike the Chinese, cannot unilaterally execute national plans. [in his example, they can't modernize a single international hub without having a fight that engenders delay and even kills projects]

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaTNpw0-wAk

[argee]

> India's central government, unlike the Chinese, cannot unilaterally execute national plans.

They don’t have the appetite to be socially modern anyway. Every Indian passport still has the holder’s parents’ name within (in Indian bureaucracy your parents seem to essentially own you regardless of age), which as TFA contends ties them to a social unit in a way that hampers the fungibility needed for smooth industrialization. Is it possible to argue that the central government doesn’t control even the passport it issues itself? It’s obvious that the motivation is simply absent, same as it was nearly a hundred years ago.

[rayiner]

Orderly east asian culture versus disorderly south asian culture? Countries with cold weather and resource constraints that require long-term planning, versus countries that have three planting seasons annually?

[hyruo]

The easiest issue to explain is the Taiwan question. In 1949, Taiwan stripped China of all its gold reserves and its entire elite class, leaving the Chinese mainland with nothing but a shambles. Furthermore, following the Korean War in 1950, the United States backed Taiwan in imposing a comprehensive blockade on China's coastline; this plunged China into a state of total hostility with the U.S.and, by extension, with the entire Western bloc. By the later stages of the Cold War, this situation had become even more dire: Khrushchev threatened to launch a "surgical" nuclear strike against China, while Eisenhower devised a strike plan involving 870 nuclear warheads. Here was an agrarian nation facing simultaneous nuclear threats from two major superpowers; under such circumstances, any discussion of economic development was nothing short of a luxury.

[wqaatwt]

Economic growth in Taiwan only began accelerating when it began transitioning from a brutal dictatorship to a democracy. Something like applies to China, of course liberalization there was primarily economic and only political to a much lesser extent.

> any discussion of economic development

That’s not true at all though. They attempted some grandiose programs. It’s just that there are hardly any words to describe how absurdly incompetent Mao and his ilk where. So they just failed outright until they began liberalizing the economy in a controlled way.

[wqaatwt]

Taiwan and South Korea were ruled by quite brutal dictatorships until the 80s - 90s. Massive growth only started when they sorted that out. Of of course we must attribute China’s success to significant liberalization and the rejection of Maoism (at least in practice) even, though it’s still quite far from a real democracy.

China was extremely mismanaged until the 90s as well and wasn’t really ahead of India. If anything they missed out on 30-40 years of actual development until Mao and other exceptionally incompetent lunatics died out.