THE RESPONSE TO ECONOMIC CHALLENGE: A COMPARATIVE ECONOMIC HISTORY OF CHINA AND INDIA, 1870-1952.

This article presents a comparative economic history of China and India and their response to economic challenge. Together, the population of the two countries comprises one-third of the world population. Today the two countries are economically in an underdeveloped stage, with low per capita income but with several impressive scientific and technological achievements. Many of the facts and issues about these two countries are gigantic, that is, population, size, history, and even the problems and complexities. But China and India did not respond to the forces of the industrial revolution that in Europe transformed nations from poor peasant societies to modern developed ones. During the course of a century and a half they failed to exploit the epochal innovations of modern economic growth. These two then-advanced nations failed to meet the challenge of modern economic growth. At the same time, both Governments did not have a wide consensus supporting them, and hence, even in the raising of resources to meet administrative expenses, coercion had to be exercised. By 1950, these factors led to a major transfer of power in the two countries. For different reasons, but with the same result, the contact of China and India with the West remains a tragic case of missed opportunity.