纽时今天有篇谈印度成为人口第一大国的文章，对比了经济发展上和中国的区别，还是比较客观的。
ILuvSunshine
楼主 (北美华人网)
上升和下降
联合国今天上午发布的数据证实，印度将很快超过中国成为人口最多的国家。 届时，这将是几个世纪以来中国首次不再拥有世界上最多的人口。
这一里程碑将注意力集中在印度成为全球大国的潜力及其面临的重大挑战上。 我在印度的时报同事今年将经常撰写有关该主题的文章，我想用今天的时事通讯来阐述这些问题。
中国在过去几十年的经济和地缘政治崛起改变了世界。 如果印度能够利用其规模——以及中国不断下降的人口——来迎头赶上，世界将再次发生变化。
第一家苹果专卖店 今天的中国比印度富裕得多，但这是一个相对较新的现象。
在 20 世纪 70 年代后期，印度更加富裕（根据最有说服力的衡量标准，即人均经济产出）。 从那时起，两国走上了截然不同的道路：
资料来源：世界银行 | 数据以现价美元计算。 | 纽约时报 70 年代后期之后发生了什么？ 在当时的统治者邓小平的领导下，中国开始向市场力量和外国投资开放经济。 它摆脱了国营共产主义的低效率。
但政府这样做是有节制的，而不是完全拥抱自由放任的资本主义。 中国维持有助于其公司发展的贸易保护：作为允许外国公司建厂的交换条件，中国限制了这些公司在中国销售商品的能力，并要求它们与当地公司分享技术。 这种市场资本主义和政府监管的结合与其他国家——包括很久以前的美国——用来实现工业化的结合是一样的。
该策略非常有效。 数以亿计的中国公民从贫困的农村地区迁移到城市的工厂工作。 由此带来的贫困人口减少可能是人类历史上最大的一次。
印度从来都不是共产主义国家，但它在 1970 年代确实有一个疲弱的社会主义经济，深受英国殖民主义的影响。 正如我在德里的同事 Mujib Mashal 和 Alex Travelli 在一个关于人口里程碑的新故事中指出的那样，印度的现代化进程比中国慢。
“近十年后，印度开始开放其准社会主义经济，”Mujib 和 Alex 写道。 “它的方法仍然是零碎的，受到棘手的联盟政治和实业家、工会、农民和社会各派之间的利益冲突的限制。”
印度的落后让中国获得了先发优势。 到 1990 年代，中国的制造业发展到足以比印度更有效率。 尽管印度的工资水平较低，但许多外国公司选择了在中国落户。
一个因素是中国政府对公路、机场、铁路网络和其他基础设施的积极投资。 今天，中国的交通往往比美国更先进。 印度的交通往往不太方便。
印度最近的领导人，包括现任总理纳伦德拉·莫迪 (Narendra Modi)，吸取了这一教训并试图迎头赶上，在基础设施上投入了大量资金。 Mujib 和 Alex 解释说，尽管中国仍然遥遥领先，但他们已经取得了重大进展。 “印度的时代已经到来，”莫迪最近表示。
（相关：Apple 昨天在印度开设了第一家零售店。）
印度的性别差距 第二个因素是教育。 长期以来，中国人口的受教育程度一直高于印度，识字率更高，完成小学、高中和大学学业的人口比例也更高。 从 20 世纪 40 年代末到 70 年代中期，教育是残酷的毛泽东时代为数不多的经济成功之一。 研究表明，受过教育的人可以成为更有生产力的工人，无论是在白领还是蓝领工作中。
重要的是，共产党对学习的关注包括女孩和男孩。 相比之下，印度在识字率和受教育程度方面存在很大的性别差距。
资料来源：世界银行 | 印度的数据截至 2018 年。 纽约时报 这些差距加剧了男女之间的就业差距。 只有大约五分之一的印度女性从事正式工作。 “在教育、就业、数字访问和各种其他参数方面，女孩和妇女无法像男孩和男人那样平等地获得赋予生命的工具和手段，”印度人口基金会执行主任 Poonam Muttreja ，一个研究小组告诉泰晤士报。 “这需要改变，印度才能真正收获人口红利。”
“人口红利”指的是印度最近的人口趋势：该国最大的年龄组是处于工作生涯黄金期的人。 由于长期的独生子女政策，中国人口正在迅速老龄化，去年出现自 1960 年代（当时毛的政策造成饥荒）以来的首次下降。 世界银行预计，到 2050 年，中国的适龄劳动人口将降至 6 亿，而印度将增至 8 亿。
人口红利使印度有机会扩大其经济和全球影响力。 一个大问题是它是否可以这样做（如这些图表所示）。 第二个问题是它将成为一个什么样的国家。
印度领导人为他们国家作为世界上最大的民主国家的地位感到自豪，印度与美国的关系比与中国的关系要好。 在民主国家和独裁国家之间持续不断的全球竞争中，印度可能是一个关键参与者。
但目前还不清楚它将站在哪一边。 我推荐阅读 Mujib 和 Alex 的故事，其中指出了莫迪继续镇压异议和拥护强人策略。
Rising and falling The United Nations released data this morning confirming that India will soon surpass China as the most populous country. When that happens, it will be the first time in centuries that China does not have the world’s largest population. The milestone is focusing attention on both India’s potential to become a global power and the significant challenges that it faces. My Times colleagues who are based in India will be writing about the subject frequently this year, and I want to use today’s newsletter to frame these issues. China’s economic and geopolitical rise over the past few decades has changed the world. If India can use its size — and China’s declining population — to catch up, the world would change again. The first Apple store China today is vastly richer than India, but that is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the late 1970s, India was more affluent (based on the most telling measure, economic output per person). Since then, the two countries have followed very different paths:
What happened after the late 1970s? Under Deng Xiaoping, its ruler at the time, China began to open its economy to market forces and foreign investment. It moved away from the inefficiencies of state-run communism. But the government did so in a measured way, rather than fully embracing laissez-faire capitalism. China maintained trade protections that helped its companies grow: In exchange for allowing foreign companies to build factories, China restricted those companies’ ability to sell goods in China and required them to share technology with local companies. This mix of market capitalism and government regulation was the same one that other countries — including the United States, long ago — have used to industrialize. The strategy worked phenomenally well. Hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens moved from poor, rural areas to take factory jobs in cities. The resulting decline in poverty may be the largest in human history. India was never a communist country, but it did have a weak socialist-style economy in the 1970s suffering the aftereffects of British colonialism. And India was slower to modernize than China, as my colleagues Mujib Mashal and Alex Travelli — both based in Delhi — point out in a new story about the population milestone. “India started opening its quasi-socialist economy nearly a decade later,” Mujib and Alex write. “Its approach remained piecemeal, constrained by tricky coalition politics and the competing interests of industrialists, unions, farmers and factions across its social spectrum.” India’s lag allowed China to grab a first-mover advantage. By the 1990s, China’s manufacturing sector was developed enough to be much more efficient than India’s. Even though wages were somewhat lower in India, many foreign companies chose to locate in China. One factor was the Chinese government’s aggressive investments in roads, airports, rail networks and other infrastructure. Today, transit in China is often more advanced than in the United States. Transportation in India tends to be less convenient. India’s recent leaders, including Narendra Modi, the current prime minister, have absorbed this lesson and tried to catch up, spending large sums on infrastructure. They have made significant progress even though China remains far ahead, Mujib and Alex explain. “India’s time has arrived,” Modi recently said. (Related: Apple opened its first retail store in India yesterday.) India’s gender gap A second factor is education. China’s population has long been more educated than India’s, with higher literacy rates and larger shares of people completing grade school, high school and college. Education was one of the few economic successes of the brutal Mao Zedong era, from the late 1940s through mid-1970s. And educated people make for more productive workers, in both white-collar and blue-collar jobs, research has shown. Importantly, the Communist Party’s focus on learning included both girls and boys. India, by contrast, has large gender gaps in literacy and educational attainment.
These gaps contribute to employment gaps between men and women. Only about one-fifth of Indian women work in a formal job. “In terms of education, employment, digital access and various other parameters, girls and women do not have equal access to life-empowering tools and means as the boys and men have,” Poonam Muttreja, the executive director of the Population Foundation of India, a research group, told The Times. “This needs to change for India to truly reap the demographic dividend.” The “demographic dividend” is a reference to recent population trends in India: The country’s largest age group is people in the prime of their working lives. China’s population is aging rapidly, because of its longtime one-child policy, and declined last year for the first time since the 1960s (when Mao’s policies caused a famine). The World Bank projects China’s working-age population to fall to 600 million by 2050 and India’s to rise to 800 million. The demographic dividend gives India a chance to expand both its economy and its global influence. One big question is whether it can do so (as these charts show). A second question is what kind of country it will be. Indian leaders are proud of their country’s status as the world’s largest democracy, and India’s relations with the United States are better than with China. In the continuing global competition between democracies and autocracies, India could be a key player. But it’s still not clear exactly which side it will be on. I recommend reading the story by Mujib and Alex, which points out Modi’s continuing crackdown on dissent and embrace of strongman tactics.
联合国今天上午发布的数据证实，印度将很快超过中国成为人口最多的国家。 届时，这将是几个世纪以来中国首次不再拥有世界上最多的人口。
这一里程碑将注意力集中在印度成为全球大国的潜力及其面临的重大挑战上。 我在印度的时报同事今年将经常撰写有关该主题的文章，我想用今天的时事通讯来阐述这些问题。
中国在过去几十年的经济和地缘政治崛起改变了世界。 如果印度能够利用其规模——以及中国不断下降的人口——来迎头赶上，世界将再次发生变化。
第一家苹果专卖店 今天的中国比印度富裕得多，但这是一个相对较新的现象。
在 20 世纪 70 年代后期，印度更加富裕（根据最有说服力的衡量标准，即人均经济产出）。 从那时起，两国走上了截然不同的道路：
资料来源：世界银行 | 数据以现价美元计算。 | 纽约时报 70 年代后期之后发生了什么？ 在当时的统治者邓小平的领导下，中国开始向市场力量和外国投资开放经济。 它摆脱了国营共产主义的低效率。
但政府这样做是有节制的，而不是完全拥抱自由放任的资本主义。 中国维持有助于其公司发展的贸易保护：作为允许外国公司建厂的交换条件，中国限制了这些公司在中国销售商品的能力，并要求它们与当地公司分享技术。 这种市场资本主义和政府监管的结合与其他国家——包括很久以前的美国——用来实现工业化的结合是一样的。
该策略非常有效。 数以亿计的中国公民从贫困的农村地区迁移到城市的工厂工作。 由此带来的贫困人口减少可能是人类历史上最大的一次。
印度从来都不是共产主义国家，但它在 1970 年代确实有一个疲弱的社会主义经济，深受英国殖民主义的影响。 正如我在德里的同事 Mujib Mashal 和 Alex Travelli 在一个关于人口里程碑的新故事中指出的那样，印度的现代化进程比中国慢。
“近十年后，印度开始开放其准社会主义经济，”Mujib 和 Alex 写道。 “它的方法仍然是零碎的，受到棘手的联盟政治和实业家、工会、农民和社会各派之间的利益冲突的限制。”
印度的落后让中国获得了先发优势。 到 1990 年代，中国的制造业发展到足以比印度更有效率。 尽管印度的工资水平较低，但许多外国公司选择了在中国落户。
一个因素是中国政府对公路、机场、铁路网络和其他基础设施的积极投资。 今天，中国的交通往往比美国更先进。 印度的交通往往不太方便。
印度最近的领导人，包括现任总理纳伦德拉·莫迪 (Narendra Modi)，吸取了这一教训并试图迎头赶上，在基础设施上投入了大量资金。 Mujib 和 Alex 解释说，尽管中国仍然遥遥领先，但他们已经取得了重大进展。 “印度的时代已经到来，”莫迪最近表示。
（相关：Apple 昨天在印度开设了第一家零售店。）
印度的性别差距 第二个因素是教育。 长期以来，中国人口的受教育程度一直高于印度，识字率更高，完成小学、高中和大学学业的人口比例也更高。 从 20 世纪 40 年代末到 70 年代中期，教育是残酷的毛泽东时代为数不多的经济成功之一。 研究表明，受过教育的人可以成为更有生产力的工人，无论是在白领还是蓝领工作中。
重要的是，共产党对学习的关注包括女孩和男孩。 相比之下，印度在识字率和受教育程度方面存在很大的性别差距。
资料来源：世界银行 | 印度的数据截至 2018 年。 纽约时报 这些差距加剧了男女之间的就业差距。 只有大约五分之一的印度女性从事正式工作。 “在教育、就业、数字访问和各种其他参数方面，女孩和妇女无法像男孩和男人那样平等地获得赋予生命的工具和手段，”印度人口基金会执行主任 Poonam Muttreja ，一个研究小组告诉泰晤士报。 “这需要改变，印度才能真正收获人口红利。”
“人口红利”指的是印度最近的人口趋势：该国最大的年龄组是处于工作生涯黄金期的人。 由于长期的独生子女政策，中国人口正在迅速老龄化，去年出现自 1960 年代（当时毛的政策造成饥荒）以来的首次下降。 世界银行预计，到 2050 年，中国的适龄劳动人口将降至 6 亿，而印度将增至 8 亿。
人口红利使印度有机会扩大其经济和全球影响力。 一个大问题是它是否可以这样做（如这些图表所示）。 第二个问题是它将成为一个什么样的国家。
印度领导人为他们国家作为世界上最大的民主国家的地位感到自豪，印度与美国的关系比与中国的关系要好。 在民主国家和独裁国家之间持续不断的全球竞争中，印度可能是一个关键参与者。
但目前还不清楚它将站在哪一边。 我推荐阅读 Mujib 和 Alex 的故事，其中指出了莫迪继续镇压异议和拥护强人策略。
Rising and falling The United Nations released data this morning confirming that India will soon surpass China as the most populous country. When that happens, it will be the first time in centuries that China does not have the world’s largest population. The milestone is focusing attention on both India’s potential to become a global power and the significant challenges that it faces. My Times colleagues who are based in India will be writing about the subject frequently this year, and I want to use today’s newsletter to frame these issues. China’s economic and geopolitical rise over the past few decades has changed the world. If India can use its size — and China’s declining population — to catch up, the world would change again. The first Apple store China today is vastly richer than India, but that is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the late 1970s, India was more affluent (based on the most telling measure, economic output per person). Since then, the two countries have followed very different paths:
What happened after the late 1970s? Under Deng Xiaoping, its ruler at the time, China began to open its economy to market forces and foreign investment. It moved away from the inefficiencies of state-run communism. But the government did so in a measured way, rather than fully embracing laissez-faire capitalism. China maintained trade protections that helped its companies grow: In exchange for allowing foreign companies to build factories, China restricted those companies’ ability to sell goods in China and required them to share technology with local companies. This mix of market capitalism and government regulation was the same one that other countries — including the United States, long ago — have used to industrialize. The strategy worked phenomenally well. Hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens moved from poor, rural areas to take factory jobs in cities. The resulting decline in poverty may be the largest in human history. India was never a communist country, but it did have a weak socialist-style economy in the 1970s suffering the aftereffects of British colonialism. And India was slower to modernize than China, as my colleagues Mujib Mashal and Alex Travelli — both based in Delhi — point out in a new story about the population milestone. “India started opening its quasi-socialist economy nearly a decade later,” Mujib and Alex write. “Its approach remained piecemeal, constrained by tricky coalition politics and the competing interests of industrialists, unions, farmers and factions across its social spectrum.” India’s lag allowed China to grab a first-mover advantage. By the 1990s, China’s manufacturing sector was developed enough to be much more efficient than India’s. Even though wages were somewhat lower in India, many foreign companies chose to locate in China. One factor was the Chinese government’s aggressive investments in roads, airports, rail networks and other infrastructure. Today, transit in China is often more advanced than in the United States. Transportation in India tends to be less convenient. India’s recent leaders, including Narendra Modi, the current prime minister, have absorbed this lesson and tried to catch up, spending large sums on infrastructure. They have made significant progress even though China remains far ahead, Mujib and Alex explain. “India’s time has arrived,” Modi recently said. (Related: Apple opened its first retail store in India yesterday.) India’s gender gap A second factor is education. China’s population has long been more educated than India’s, with higher literacy rates and larger shares of people completing grade school, high school and college. Education was one of the few economic successes of the brutal Mao Zedong era, from the late 1940s through mid-1970s. And educated people make for more productive workers, in both white-collar and blue-collar jobs, research has shown. Importantly, the Communist Party’s focus on learning included both girls and boys. India, by contrast, has large gender gaps in literacy and educational attainment.
These gaps contribute to employment gaps between men and women. Only about one-fifth of Indian women work in a formal job. “In terms of education, employment, digital access and various other parameters, girls and women do not have equal access to life-empowering tools and means as the boys and men have,” Poonam Muttreja, the executive director of the Population Foundation of India, a research group, told The Times. “This needs to change for India to truly reap the demographic dividend.” The “demographic dividend” is a reference to recent population trends in India: The country’s largest age group is people in the prime of their working lives. China’s population is aging rapidly, because of its longtime one-child policy, and declined last year for the first time since the 1960s (when Mao’s policies caused a famine). The World Bank projects China’s working-age population to fall to 600 million by 2050 and India’s to rise to 800 million. The demographic dividend gives India a chance to expand both its economy and its global influence. One big question is whether it can do so (as these charts show). A second question is what kind of country it will be. Indian leaders are proud of their country’s status as the world’s largest democracy, and India’s relations with the United States are better than with China. In the continuing global competition between democracies and autocracies, India could be a key player. But it’s still not clear exactly which side it will be on. I recommend reading the story by Mujib and Alex, which points out Modi’s continuing crackdown on dissent and embrace of strongman tactics.
