Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
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U.S. and UK tech startups welcome in China – with a little supervision Martin Anderson. Editor, The Stack, Friday 12th August
On August 1st Travis Kalanick, CEO and co-founder of Uber, finally admitted defeat regarding the company’s three-year crusade to gain a foothold in China, with the ‘merging’ (most consider it a ‘sale’) of Uber’s Chinese operations with local incumbent Didi Chuxing. Whatever Kalanick may have recovered from the concession, it seems unlikely that Uber will recoup the billions it has already poured into its most distant territory. But there was no alternative – by January of this year, the Uber board was urging that the ride-sharing giant – such an indefatigable combatant in so many contested territories – throw in the towel.
Ultimately Didi was going to win this battle; despite cash and equity of $28 billion vs Uber’s $68 billion, Didi had reserved $10 billion to strengthen its grip on this fundamental societal change in China – almost on a par with what the better-financed Uber was willing to invest.
A headline-grabbing contest of this nature gives the false impression of China as isolationist in terms of cooperating with global tech startups – it isn’t. The country runs a UK-China tech incubator in Shenzhen, backed by Tencent and providing crucial advice on the peculiarities of the Chinese market to Brit startups. The deal even offers free office space, business counsel and pitch opportunities. Whilst willing to repel boarders on the scale of Uber, China has no problem in contributing to a post-Brexit UK brain drain.
Likewise Alibaba runs a similar scheme to increase tech migration from the United States – almost impossibly tempting for new companies dazzled by the economy-of-scale that Chinese success promises, and struggling for attention in saturated home markets. Perhaps the most useful aspect of these international schemes is the business advice from native sources – western entrepreneurs see huge opportunities in Chinese numbers, yet fail to take account of national psychology; either on an individual level (the Chinese consumer), or at the level of a state which is well aware of its riches – and needs only as much western genius to exploit them as serves its future interests in the post-sharing economy.
Recently, I noticed that the Indian armybagpipe bands tend to sway as they march. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fkT6SdD9LQ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgW0HnY9crA Bands without bagpipes do not sway.
I tried to check via Google if the Pakistani army bagpipe bands did the same and couldn’t find any example. So, my conclusion is that it was not a habit formed during the Raj but developed indigenously after Independence.
So the question: when and why did the Indian army bagpipe bands develop this swaying action?
The country could create sustainable economic conditions in five ways, such as promoting acceptable living standards, improving the urban infrastructure, and unlocking the potential of women.
Twenty-five years ago, India embarked on a journey of economic liberalization, opening its doors to globalization and market forces. We, and the rest of the world, have watched as the investment and trade regime introduced in 1991 raised economic growth, increased consumer choice, and reduced poverty significantly.
Now, as uncertainties cloud the global economic picture, the International Monetary Fund has projected that India’s GDP will grow by 7.4 percent for 2016–17, making it the world’s fastest-growing large economy. India also compares favorably with other emerging markets in growth potential. (Exhibit 1).
The country offers an attractive long-term future powered largely by a consuming class that’s expected to more than triple, to 89 million households, by 2025.Exhibit 1
Liberalization has created new opportunities. The challenge for policy makers is to manage growth so that it creates the basis for sustainable economic performance. Although much work has been done, India’s transformation into a global economic force has yet to fully benefit all its citizens. There’s a massive unmet need for basic services, such as water and sanitation, energy, and health care, for example, while red tape makes it hard to do business. The government has begun to address many of these challenges, and the pace of change could accelerate in coming years as some initiatives gain scale.
From our vantage point, India has an exciting future. In the new McKinsey Global Institute report India’s ascent: Five opportunities for growth and transformation, we look at game-changing opportunities for the country’s economy and the implications for domestic businesses, multinational companies, and the government. The five areas we focus on by no means provide a comprehensive assessment of India’s prospects, but we believe they are among the most significant trends. Foreign and Indian businesses would do well to recognize these opportunities and reflect on how to exploit them.
1. From poverty to empowerment:
Acceptable living standards for allThe trickle-down effect of economic liberalization has lifted millions of Indians from indigence in the past two decades. The official poverty rate declined from 45 percent of the population in 1994 to 22 percent in 2012, but this statistic defines only the most dismal situations. By our broader measure of minimum acceptable living standards—spanning nutrition, water, sanitation, energy, housing, education, and healthcare—we find that 56 percent of Indians lacked the basics in 2012.
The country will need to address these gaps to achieve its potential. The task is certainly within India’s capacity, but policy makers will have to promote an agenda emphasizing job creation, growth-oriented investment, farm-sector productivity, and innovative social programs that help the people who actually need them. The private sector has a substantial role to play both in creating and providing effective basic services.
2. Sustainable urbanization:
Building India’s growth enginesBy 2025, MGI estimates, India will have 69 cities with a population of more than one million each. Economic growth will center on them, and the biggest infrastructure building will take place there. The output of Indian cities will come to resemble that of cities in middle-income nations (Exhibit 2).
In 2030, for example, Mumbai’s economy, a mammoth market of $245 billion in consumption, will be bigger than Malaysia’s today. The next four cities by market size will each have annual consumption of $80 billion to $175 billion by 2030.Exhibit 2To achieve sustainable growth, these cities will have to become more livable places, offering clean air and water, reliable utilities, and extensive green spaces. India’s urban transformation represents a huge opportunity for domestic and international businesses that can provide capital, technology, and planning know-how, as well as the goods and services urban consumers demand.
3. Manufacturing for India, in India
Although India’s manufacturing sector has lagged behind China’s, there will be substantial opportunities to invest in value-creating businesses and to create jobs. India’s appeal to potential investors will be more than just its low-cost labor: manufacturers there are building competitive businesses to tap into the large and growing local market. Further reforms and public infrastructure investments could make it easier for all types of manufacturing businesses—foreign and Indian alike—to achieve scale and efficiency.
4. Riding the digital wave:
Harnessing technology for India’s growthTwelve powerful technologies will benefit India, helping to raise productivity, improving efficiency across major sectors of the economy, and radically altering the provision of services such as education and healthcare. These technologies could add $550 billion to $1 trillion a year of economic value in 2025, according to our analysis, potentially creating millions of well-paying, productive jobs (including positions for people with moderate levels of formal education) and helping millions of Indians to enjoy a decent standard of living.
5. Unlocking the potential of Indian women: If not now, when?
Our research suggests that women now contribute only 17 percent of India’s GDP and make up just 24 percent of the workforce, compared with 40 percent globally. In the coming decade, they will represent one of the largest potential economic forces in the country. If it matched the progress toward gender parity of the region’s fastest-improving country, we estimate that it could add $700 billion to its GDP in 2025. Movement toward closing the gender gap in education and in financial and digital inclusion has begun, but there is scope for further progress.
Public-sector efforts to address the five areas are under way. The government is attempting to improve the investment climate and accelerate job creation—India’s ranking on the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report climbed to 55 in 2015–16, from 71 a year earlier. Officials are moving to make the government more efficient, using technology that can leapfrog traditional bottlenecks of a weak infrastructure. One billion Indian citizens, for example, are now registered under Aadhaar, the world’s largest digital-identity program and a potent platform for delivering benefits directly to the poor.
Realizing India’s promise will require national, state, and local leaders to adopt new approaches to governance and the provision of services. To meet the people’s aspirations, these officials will also need new capabilities. The requirements include private sector–style procurement and supply-chain expertise, deep technical skills for planning portfolios of infrastructure investments, and strong project-management capabilities to ensure that large capital projects finish on time and on budget. Training will be needed to help staff members use digital technologies to automate and reengineer processes, manage big data and advanced analytics, and improve interactions among citizens through digitized touchpoints, online-access platforms, portals, and messaging and payment platforms. The government could acquire these capabilities by adopting quality-oriented procurement policies and taking advantage of secondments from the private sector. For businesses, India represents a sizable market but will require a granular strategy and a locally focused operating model.
No single report can capture all the changes taking place in the country, but we have tried here to identify the most significant trends. Foreign and Indian businesses should consider how their strategies will be influenced by them. Policy makers should focus on helping all stakeholders to capitalize on them. By any measure, the challenge is daunting, but success could give a historic boost to India’s economy.
For two days in row, Chinese swimmer Fu Yuanhui clambered out of the Olympic pool in Rio clueless about her breakthrough performances: breaking personal records and clinching a bronze medal.
Each time a poolside reporter had to break the news to the bubbly 20-year-old, whose vivacious epiphanies on live television have broken the Chinese internet.“I was so fast! I’m really pleased!” Ms. Fu exclaimed Monday after learning that she swam the 100-meter backstroke semifinal in 58.95 seconds, a new personal best. “I’ve already… expended my primordial powers!”
After Tuesday’s final, when told that she trailed the silver medalist by just 0.01 second, Ms. Fu replied, “Maybe it’s because my arms are too short.”
Her gleeful candor made her an overnight online sensation. Fans feted her as “Primordial Girl” in online memes and viral videos spoofing her exuberant expressions. Her Weibo microblog following swelled more than sixfold to 3.8 million users.
China has a new sports star, and never mind that she didn’t finish first. In a country long obsessed with winning gold medals, Ms. Fu’s newfound fame seemed to signal shifting social perceptions about the meaning of sport.
“‘Primordial Girl’ and the netizens who appreciate her have taught all of us a lesson: sport is about the struggle and, especially, enjoyment, but most definitely not about spinning gold,” the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, said in a Tuesday commentary.
“The warm support from netizens,” according to the newspaper, “shows that public attitudes toward competitive sport and the Olympics have sublimated to a higher level.
”Ms. Fu’s fans, for their part, credited her “authentic” demeanor, which contrasted with the mild mien typical of Chinese Olympians. “We love your happy optimism and strong personality,” a Weibo user wrote on Ms. Fu’s microblog. “That’s what makes a true athlete.
”Winning used to be everything for China’s Olympians, virtually all of whom came through a grueling state-run sports regime that fetishized success. Athletes who strike gold can expect fame and fortune, while those who disappoint often suffer neglect or even ignominy.
Liu Xiang, a hurdler who became the first Chinese man to win an Olympic gold in athletics at the 2004 Athens Games, saw public adulation turn into anguish and anger at the Beijing Games four years later, when an injury forced him to withdraw just before running his first race.E
China nonetheless crowned a grandly staged Beijing Olympics by topping the gold-medal tally for the first time, with 51 in all. Their gold haul dropped to a second-place 38 at the 2012 Games in London, and some Chinese pundits expect a further slip in Rio, to between 30 and 36.
State media, for its part, has tried to manage public expectations about China’s ebbing gold rush.
“As we mature in mentality, learn how to appreciate competition, and become able to calmly applaud our rivals, we’d showcase the confidence and tolerance of a great country,” state broadcaster China Central Television said Sunday in a Weibo post after a goldless first day.
“We still need our first gold medal to boost morale, but what we really need is to challenge ourselves, surpass ourselves,” CCTV said. By Tuesday Chinese athletes had racked up eight golds, alongside three silvers and six bronzes.The message seems to be filtering through, with many Chinese fans appearing more tolerant of athletes who underperformed.
Among the beneficiaries was Ning Zetao, a swimmer who won widespread popularity at last year’s world championships with his boyish good looks—and a 100-meter freestyle gold.
After crashing out of the same event in Rio at the semifinal stage on Tuesday, the 23-year-old appeared philosophical about his failure.
“I’ve done my best,” he told a CCTV reporter.
His comments found a receptive audience among his Weibo fandom. “This is Ning Zetao’s first time participating in the Olympics,” one user wrote. “Don’t give him too much pressure!”
PHOTO: Employees worked on the cabin of a Sikorsky S-92 at the Tata Advanced Systems Ltd. facility at Adibatla in the south Indian city of Hyderabad, June 07, 2016.
Having signed a string of multibillion-dollar orders from foreign firms to make parts for helicopters, jet fighters and trains, India is struggling to find people with the skills to build them.
In a $3.3 billion push, it is racing to equip 15 million people by 2020 with the skills necessary to realize Indian Prime MinisterNarendra Modi’s aim to bring more high-grade manufacturing to the country.
But the challenges are significant at a time when foreign suppliers including Boeing Co., Airbus Group SE and Alstom SA often can’t find the employees with the training and experience to help fulfill Mr. Modi’s ‘Make in India’ program.E
More than 80% of engineers in India are “unemployable”, Aspiring Minds, an Indian employability assessment firm, said in a January report after a study of about 150,000 engineering students in about 650 engineering colleges in the country.
A lack of specialized courses mean companies have to train their own people from scratch. At one training center outside Hyderabad in southern India, young workers in their early 20s toil with high-precision hand tools as they are taught for the first time how to fix rivets on aircraft-grade aluminum sheets as part of a year-long training program.
A group concerned about the safety of India’s cows has embarked on a controversial and ambitious mission this month: counting all the cattle in the state of West Bengal.
“Our aim is to save the cow mother,” said Subrata Gupta, president of the Bengal branch of Cow Development Cell, which used to be associated with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The group will use the data to protect the state’s cows, many of which are being illegally exported to Bangladesh and Pakistan for slaughter, said Mr. Gupta.
The status of cows — an animal deeply revered in Hinduism – is a divisive issue in the country. Critics say conservative Hindu groups, emboldened by the BJP’s power in New Delhi, are eating away at the country’s secular roots by trying to ban beef consumption.
Over the weekend Mr. Modi spoke out against self-styled vigilantes who say they are trying to protect cows. He urged state governments to punish them when they use cow protection as a rationalization for hate crimes.
Cow slaughter is already illegal in many Indian states–including Uttar Pradesh where a Muslim man was killed by a mob last year following rumors he had slaughtered a cow for food.
The eastern state of West Bengal, however, allows the killing of cows during the Islamic religious festival of Eid.
Around 6,000 volunteers from Mr. Gupta’s group are going door-to-door across state to record how many cows each household owns. The group wants to finish the survey before Sept. 12, when Muslims will celebrate Eid.
“Thousands of cows are being smuggled across India’s border into Bangladesh, where they will be slaughtered,” said Mr. Gupta of the Cow Development Cell which has groups apprehending cattle trucks, even though it has no legal authority to do so.
He said activists from the group freed about 40,000 animals last month.
The BJP recently broke ties with Mr. Gupta’s Cow Development Cell.
“It was an all-India decision that a separate cell for cow development is not needed,” said Dilip Ghosh, president of the BJP in West Bengal.
That hasn’t stopped Mr. Gupta and his army of self-styled cow protectors who say they will release the results of the cow census on Sept. 15.
Like Noah and his animal-laden ark, China has its own creation legends. Thousands of years ago, one story goes, a man named Yu tamed the country’s terrible flooding with the assistance of a dragon and was ultimately named emperor.
Now the authors of a new paper published in the U.S. journal Science say they’ve found evidence of an ancient, cataclysmic flood that helps to underpin at least part of that legend. In a bigger leap, they also say their research helps offer evidence for the existence of what some describe as China’s first dynasty, the Xia, long seen in some quarters as a myth.
The team found that a massive flood took place around 1920 B.C., a time that coincides with when many scholars believe the Xia dynasty first emerged. The flood finding is notable, they say, because annals that mention the Xia dynasty say that Yu went on to found the dynasty and become its emperor after successfully dispelling flooding along the Yellow River.
“Many foreigners haven’t heard of the Xia dynasty or don’t believe it existed,” says Wu Qinglong, who led the team’s work during a recent post-doctorate stint at Peking University. “But in China, it’s different, this is a story passed down by tradition.
”According to their findings, an earthquake triggered a landslide that in turn swallowed up a large gorge located in Qinghai province traversed by the Yellow River. That landslide created a “huge cork” and a natural dam 200 meters tall that caused water to build up for six to nine months before breaking free, causing some 16 cubic kilometers of water to surge forth, says David Cohen, assistant professor in anthropology at National Taiwan University and a co-author on the paper.
The precise date determined by researchers was derived from the analysis of findings at a village downstream from the dam destroyed by the earthquake. A test of bones of children killed in the quake found they died around 1920 B.C. The presence of sediment from the flood found in fissures caused by the quake helped establish the flood’s timing, Mr. Cohen said.
Still, scholars caution against too hastily connecting the dots between the existence of a flood, however sizable, and that of the Xia. James T. Williams, an assistant professor at Renmin University who studies the economy of Bronze Age societies in China, notes that written records invoking the Xia dynasty weren’t produced until hundreds of years later. While the flood evidence may be persuasive, he notes, “a one-to-one correlation” with the existence of the Xia is a harder case to make.Mr. Cohen acknowledges such skepticism. “A number of assumptions have to be made,” he says. “First, you have to accept that there was a Xia dynasty, and you have to accept that its founding was somehow related to a massive flood of the Yellow River.”
But for China, he says, “It’s a story of the foundation of civilization and how it came into being.
”Flooding remains a massive problem in China, with torrential rains leading to widespread urban flooding that has killed hundreds this year.
For its lead author, producing the report wasn’t easy. After completing his post-doctorate and leaving Peking University in 2012, Mr. Wu spent several years unemployed as he sought to complete his research. At times, he relied on loans from friends, he said. In Beijing, he lived in various subdivided apartments, including a three-room place shared among 10 for which he paid 600 yuan ($90) a month.
Still, he says he is gratified by his team’s findings. “We’ve found existence of a big flood. We think it’s very possible it’s the one from our legends and it helps support the history of the Xia dynasty,” he says. “The evidence supports the veracity of it all.”
The collapse of a bridge in the western Indian state of Maharashtra this week that left 14 people dead and 18 others missing wasn’t the first road tragedy to hit the area.In 2013, a bus veered off a 80 year-old bridge on the Jagbudi river, which flows parallel to the Savitri about 70 kilometers (43 miles) to the south, killing 37 of the 52 people on board.
That accident happened when a bus flew off the bridge and flipped in midair before landing on its roof 30 feet below.
Such incidents are alarmingly frequent on India’s roads.
India has been spending more money to improve its bridges, ports and airports, but the Savitri accident is yet another example of how the country’s depleted infrastructure is under increasing strain due to the rising demands of a fast-developing economy.
Its ageing road network, the world’s second-largest after the U.S. but largely made of dirt tracks, is particularly challenging. India’s roads are the most dangerous in the world: In 2015, the country accounted for almost one in 10 road casualties world-wide, according to the World Health Organization.
While India reported 137,000 deaths due to road crashes in 2013, the WHO estimated the figure was much higher. Those deaths cause an approximate 3% loss in economic output, it said.
Two buses and a number of cars plunged into the Savitri river in the early hours of Wednesday when the bridge in Mahad, built before India gained independence from Britain in 1947, crumbled into the waters below amid heavy monsoon rains.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has ordered a judicial probe into the accident and said government technicians will carry out a safety audit of old bridges in the state.
The bodies of 14 people were recovered from the waters of the Savitri by Friday morning, and 18 more are missing, National Disaster Response Force Commandant Anupam Srivastava said.
A view of the Yellow river near the Lajia site, hit by a flood 4,000 years ago, in Qinghai province, China in this undated handout photo. Wu Qinglong/Science/Handout via REUTERS
The crushed skeletons of children point to an earthquake and catastrophic flood on China’s Yellow River 4,000 years ago that could be the source of a legendary “Great Flood” at the dawn of Chinese civilization, scientists say.
A Chinese-led team found remnants of a vast landslide, caused by an earthquake, big enough to block the Yellow River in what is now Qinghai province near Tibet.
Ancient sediments indicated that the pent-up river formed a vast lake over several months that eventually breached the dam, unleashing a cataclysm powerful enough to flood land 2,000 km (1,200 miles) downstream, the scientists wrote in the journal Science.
The authors put the Yellow River flood at around 1920 BC by carbon-dating the skeletons of children in a group of 14 victims found crushed downstream, apparently when their home collapsed in the earthquake. Deep cracks in the ground opened by the quake were filled by mud typical of a flood and indicated that it struck less than a year after the quake.
The flood on Asia’s third-longest river would have been among the worst anywhere in the world in the last 10,000 years and matches tales of a “Great Flood” that marks the start of Chinese civilization with the Xia dynasty.
“No scientific evidence has been discovered before” for the legendary flood, lead author Wu Qinglong of Nanjing Normal University told a telephone news conference.
In traditional histories, a hero called Yu eventually tamed the waters by dredging, “earning him the divine mandate to establish the Xia dynasty, the first in Chinese history,” the scientists wrote.
Their finds around the Jishi Gorge from about 1900 B.C. would place the start of the Xia dynasty several centuries later than traditionally thought, around the time of a shift to the Bronze Age from the Stone Age along the Yellow River.
Some historians doubt the Xia dynasty existed, reckoning it part of myth-making centuries later to prop up imperial rule. Written records date only from 450 BC.
The evidence of a massive flood in line with the legend “provides us with a tantalizing hint that the Xia dynasty might really have existed,” said David Cohen of National Taiwan University, one of the authors.
Deluges feature in many traditions, from Hindu texts to the Biblical story of Noah. In pre-history, floods were probably frequent as ice sheets melted after the last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago, raising world sea levels.
Poland is in talks with potential investors from China over selling a stake in the state airline LOT [LOT.UL], Deputy Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Wednesday.
Poland’s euroskeptic, conservative government has been looking to tighten its relations with China since coming to power last year. The two countries pledged deeper co-operation during the visit of China’s leader Xi Jinping to Warsaw in June.”LOT is our national carrier, which we are trying to save no matter the cost. It is deeply in debt,” Morawiecki told state news agency PAP on Wednesday, adding that without a national carrier Poland would become a more peripheral country.
LOT, one of the world’s oldest airlines, has for years struggled to compete against low-cost competitors like Ryanair (RYA.I) and bigger rivals. The state-owned airline was saved from bankruptcy in 2012 thanks to public aid of more than 500 million zlotys ($130 million).
“The previous government has already granted public support for LOT, we cannot grant another and we are looking for an investor,” Morawiecki said.
“According to EU law a carrier from outside the EU cannot take over more than 49 percent of a carrier from the EU, hence we are in talks with potential investors, among others, from China,” he said.Morawiecki also said that usually it is a very long road to finalize such a transaction.
Earlier on Wednesday, a Polish local newspaper reported that Chinese carrier Air China (601111.SS) is interested in buying a 49-percent stake in LOT with a delegation from the Chinese firm expected to arrive in Warsaw over the coming days.
However, a LOT spokesman said he had no knowledge of any plans for a capital tie-up between LOT and Air China.
“I have no knowledge regarding any planned capital co-operation between LOT and Air China,” Adrian Kubicki, LOT spokesman said. “We have commercial co-operation with Air China, which we want to develop, regarding the Warsaw-Beijing route.”
Air China was not immediately available for comment.
Liberalization has created new opportunities. The challenge for policy makers is to manage growth so that it creates the basis for sustainable economic performance. Although much work has been done, India’s transformation into a global economic force has yet to fully benefit all its citizens. There’s a massive unmet need for basic services, such as water and sanitation, energy, and health care, for example, while red tape makes it hard to do business. The government has begun to address many of these challenges, and the pace of change could accelerate in coming years as some initiatives gain scale.
In 2030, for example, Mumbai’s economy, a mammoth market of $245 billion in consumption, will be bigger than Malaysia’s today. The next four cities by market size will each have annual consumption of $80 billion to $175 billion by 2030.Exhibit 2To achieve sustainable growth, these cities will have to become more livable places, offering clean air and water, reliable utilities, and extensive green spaces. India’s urban transformation represents a huge opportunity for domestic and international businesses that can provide capital, technology, and planning know-how, as well as the goods and services urban consumers demand.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 