China Boom CMS

<p>China had a communist revolution which, like it or not, kind of wrenched it from a feudal past and propelled it into a kind of modernity that continues to escape India today, which remains, very much, a feudal society. And the kind of continuities with the past in India are far stronger than they are in China. As a result, it [India] remains a deeply misogynist and deeply patriarchal society, which there are huge elements of in China today as well, but there was a dislocation that was created in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which means that the participation of [Chinese] women in the workforce today is higher than the world average, while in India it&rsquo;s really much, much lower than the world average. If you look at female literacy figures, it&rsquo;s more or less the same as male literacy, because maybe one or two percentage points down; in India it&rsquo;s something like less than 50% of women are considered literate today. So, of course, when you have half of your population, and less than half of those are literate, that&rsquo;s bound to have a big impact on any kind of economic growth story. So, gender empowerment is something that is very much there to China&rsquo;s advantage&hellip; as other aspects of human development, and that is really, in some ways, the biggest gulf between India and China; not just the infrastructure which people tend to focus a lot on, but human development, and by this I&rsquo;m talking about literacy, gender empowerment, dignity of labor, those kinds of issues.</p>