India's railway plan: Loud Thunder, little rain again

Last time, I wrote about India's insufficient action to fulfil its ambitious plan for adding power generation capacity. The same story is happening in India's railway system without any exception.

BTW, new data released by India government shows that India added only 9585 mw of new power capacity in 2009-2010 fisical year (india's fisical year ends in March), against the overall target of 14,507 MW.

The achievement during 2008-09 was 31 per cent (3,454 MW against a target of 11,061 MW) and 57 per cent in 2007-08 (9,263 MW against a target of 16,335 MW).(Source)

You cannot imagine that a country of 1.1 billion population could only build 513 km of new railways in 2 years, but its leaders are still shamelessly talking about improving infrastructure quickly and bragging that India is catching up with China.

For a convenient comparison, China built more than 30,000km of new railways in the 30 years before the reform. That means China built more than 1,000 km of new line each year 30 years ago.

In 2009 alone, China constructed new railroad lines of 5,461km, 4,063km of new double lines. Total of 5,557 km of new lines were put into operation, including 2,319 km of new high-speed lines. 8,849 km railways were electrified in 2009 alone. (Source)

The following reports came from here.

Indian Railways could achieve only 28 per cent of the total 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-12) targets in the first two years.

"Performance of the Railways, in the first two years of the plan period, was much below the proportionate targets as it could achieve only 28 per cent of total plan size," according to the latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

It was planned to add 2,000 kms of new lines, convert 10,000 km of metre/narrow gauge into broad gauge, double the 6,000 km of single track and electrify 3,500 km of routes during the 11th Plan.

However, in the first two years of the plan period, 513 km (25.65 per cent) of new lines, 2,612 km (26.12 per cent) of gauge conversion, 789 kms (13.15 per cent) of doubling and 1,299 km (37.11 per cent) of electrification was completed.

The report revealed that out of 144 ongoing railway projects, six projects have been delayed by over 10 years.

The anticipated cost of completion of these projects has been revised to Rs 13,055.47 crore (Rs 130.55 billion) from original cost of 3,463.60 crore (Rs 34.63 billion).

The 11th Plan size of Rs 2,33,289 crore (Rs 2,332.89 billion) envisages financing of Rs 63,635 crore (Rs 636.35 billion) through general budgetary support, Rs 90,000 crore (Rs 900 billion) through internal resources and Rs 79,654 crore (Rs 796.54 billion) through extra budgetary resources.

Human rights? 1140 people were killed by Indian railway in 15 months in Chennai ONLY

The list of people run over by trains in Chennai had crossed 1140 in the last 15 months.

According to official data, more than 275 people were killed on Chennai Beach-Mount section, the highest in EMU sector, followed by 204 accidents between Pazhavanthangal and Maraimalai Nagar, falling under Tambaram Railway Police Station during the period of January 2009 and March 2010.


Source.

India's plans are often ambitious, But Can be fulfilled?

Indians often talk about how wonderful India will be and how fast they are developing. This makes world believe India is almost a superpower. How this can happen? Their government always give Indians big hopes, and Indians take those plan as reality. But the truth is very different. Let me give you one example from India's electricity industry.

India is awfully short of electricity. In 2007, India had only a total of power generation capacity of 130,000MW (similar as UK's capacity, but UK has tiny population comparing with India's.).

In May 2007, India prime minister gave Indians a big promise: India planed to add 78000 MW new capacity with some effort during the 5 years ending in March 2012. Can this be a possible mission for India?

I found one sentence like this in an article that was published in March 2009: (Source)

"India’s track record in adding power generating capacity is unenviable. In the five years to 2007, the country added 20,950MW of capacity, against a target of 41,110MW. "

Another report in July 2009 told the similar story: (Source)

In 2007/08 (Means April 2007 to March 2008, India's fisical year) India produced only 77 percent of the revised target of 12 GW and last year (2008/09) it was only 46 percent of the targetted 7.53 GW.

That means in the two years between April 2007 and March 2009, India only added 12,703MW capacity.

Is India's plan really that ambitious? Since Indians often said India will surpass China. I can tell you some related numbers about China:

At the end of 2008, China has total power capacity of 792,530 MW (camparin with India's about 150,000 MW). China addded 90,510 MW capacity in 2008 alone. (including hydropower of 20,100 MW, windmil of 4,660 MW). (Source)

Indian Economy Is In Trouble

India's industry, Infrastructure growth nosedives

Amidst crisis in the global financial markets, India on Friday reported a sharp drop in industrial growth to 1.3 per cent in August from a high of 10.9 a year-ago.

The manufacturing sector put out a dismal performance growing by a mere 1.1 per cent as against 10.7 per cent in the same period a year ago.

The growth in key infrastructure industries too dipped to 2.3 per cent in August 2008, compared with 9.5 per cent in the same period last year.

The cement sector declined to 1.9 per cent against 16.7 per cent in August 2007, while coal output dropped to 5.9 per cent compared with 8 per cent in the corresponding year.

Finished (carbon) steel growth also declined to 4.4 per cent in August, from 9.6 per cent in the same month last year.

For the April-August period of 2008-09, crude oil production registered a negative growth of 0.9 per cent, against one per cent during the same period last year, while petroleum refinery products dropped to 4.8 per cent from a healthy 10.4 per cent in the same period last year.

Source.

Weakening currency

The weak currency ended Oct. 8 at 48 rupees to the dollar, its lowest level in 5½ years. The rupee has taken a 21% dive since January.

Source

The currency reached a record low of 49.26 per dollar in intraday trading on Fridaqy (10-10-2008).

Source.

Stock market is in nerve

On Friday, Except Ranbaxy Laboratories and State Bank of India, all the other 28 stocks in the Sensex basket ended lower. Among the major losers, Reliance Communications crashed 21.02% at Rs237.40, ICICI Bank plunged 19.71% at Rs364.10, Reliance Infrastructure slumped 19.26% at Rs515.30 and JP Associates crumbled 16.27% at Rs76.15. Tata Steel plummeted 14.99% at Rs287.50, Hindalco Industries dropped 11.18% at Rs80.65, HDFC shed 8.98% at Rs1719.20, DLF tanked 8.79% at Rs281.65, BHEL declined 8.28% at Rs1,345.85 and Larsen & Toubro lost 8.02% at Rs889.15. Other heavyweights also came under sustained selling pressure and lost around 5-7% each.

Realty stocks were battered the worst. Orbit Corporation tanked nearly 19.45% at Rs87.50, IndiaBulls Real Estate plummeted 19.45% at Rs95.45, Mahindra Lifespace Developers slumped 17.49% at Rs211.55, Peninsula Land dropped 16.05% at Rs28.25, Anant Raj Industries lost 15.07% at Rs80 and Unitech slipped by 12.38% at Rs82.80. Akruti City, Omaxe, Parsvnath Developers and Phoenix Mills declined over 1-8% each.

Source.

India's Economy Hits the Wall

Growth is slipping, stocks are down 40%, and foreign stock market investors are fleeing. Businessmen blame the ruling coalition for failing to make reforms.

Just six months ago, India was looking good. Annual growth was 9%, corporate profits were surging 20%, the stock market had risen 50% in 2007, consumer demand was huge, local companies were making ambitious international acquisitions, and foreign investment was growing. Nothing, it seemed, could stop the forward march of this Asian nation.

But stop it has. In the past month, India has joined the list of the wounded. The country is reeling from 11.4% inflation, large government deficits, and rising interest rates. Foreign investment is fleeing, the rupee is falling, and the stock market is down over 40% from the year's highs. Most economic forecasts expect growth to slow to 7%—a big drop for a country that needs to accelerate growth, not reduce it. "India has gone from hero to zero in six months," says Andrew Holland, head of proprietary trading at Merrill Lynch India (MER) in Mumbai. Many in India worry that the country's hard-earned investment-grade rating will soon be lost and that the gilded growth story has come to an end.

Global circumstances—soaring oil prices and the subprime crisis that dried up the flow of foreign funds—are certainly to blame. But so is New Delhi. Much of the crisis India faces today could have been avoided by skillful planning. India imports 75% of its oil to meet demand, which have grown exponentially as its economy expands. The government also subsidizes 60% of the price of such fuels as diesel. In 2007, when inflation was a low 3%, economists such as Standard & Poor's Subir Gokarn urged New Delhi to start cutting subsidies. Instead, the populist ruling Congress government spent $25 billion on waiving loans made to farmers and hiking bureaucrats' salaries.

Botched Opportunities
Now those expenditures, plus an additional $25 billion on upcoming fertilizer subsidies, is adding $100 billion a year—or 10% of India's gross domestic product, or equivalent to the country's entire collection of income taxes—to the national bill. This at a time when India needs urgently to spend $500 billion on new infrastructure and more on upgrading education and health-care facilities. The government's official debt, which dropped below 6% of gross domestic product last year, will now be closer to 10% this year. "Starting last year, the government missed key opportunities" to fix the economy, says Gokarn. In fact, he adds, "there has been no significant reform done at all in the past four years"—the time the Congress coalition has been in power.

Even the most bullish on India are hard-pressed to recall any significant economic reforms made in the recent past. A plan to build 30 Special Economic Zones is virtually suspended because New Delhi has not sorted out how to acquire the necessary land, a major issue in both urban and rural India, without a major social and political upheaval. Agriculture, distorted by fertilizer subsidies and technologically laggard, is woefully unproductive. Simple and nonpolitical reforms, like strengthening the legal system and adding more judges to the courtrooms, have been ignored.

A June 16 report by Goldman Sachs' (GS) Jim O'Neill and Tushar Poddar, Ten Things for India to Achieve Its 2050 Potential, is a grim reminder that India has fallen to the bottom of the four BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) in its growth scores, due largely to government inertia. The report states that India's rice yields are a third those of China and half of Vietnam's. While 60% of the country's labor force is employed in agriculture, farming contributes less than 1% to overall growth. The report urges India to improve governance, raise educational achievement, and control inflation. It also advises reining in profligate expenditures, liberalizing its financial markets, increasing agricultural productivity, and improving infrastructure, the environment, and energy use. "The will to implement all these needs leadership," points out Poddar. "We have a government in New Delhi with the best brains, the dream team," he says, referring to Oxford-educated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Harvard-educated Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. "If they don't deliver, then what?"

Disillusioned Business
More worried than most are India's businessmen, who have turned in stellar performances with their investment and entrepreneurial drive and begun to look like multinational players. For them, there's plenty at stake. But lack of infrastructure, from new ports to roads, along with an undeveloped corporate bond market and high prices for real estate, commodities, and talent, are causing them to hit "choke points and structural impediments all over. We will lose years," says Bombay investor Chetan Parikh of of Jeetay Investments.

Sanjay Kirloskar, chief executive of Kirloskar Brothers (KRBR.BO), a premier $470 million maker of water pumps, already has $100 million in overseas contracts. Yet few infrastructure contracts have come from New Delhi. Kirloskar had hoped to be part of a grand project linking India's rivers, but those plans have been on hold for four years. "The infrastructure growth we had hoped for has not come about," he says. "Instead, we will now expand overseas more than in India."

Such constraints on growth at home will have an impact. Corporate earnings growth is likely to dip, says Merrill Lynch's Holland, who now predicts just 10% growth, instead of the previous year's 20%. That slowdown makes it less attractive for foreigners to invest in India's stock market. Already this year, foreigners have taken $5.5 billion out of the market, compared with the $19 billion they invested last year. Gagan Banga, chief executive of India Bulls Financial Services, an emerging finance and real estate giant, points admiringly to China's ability to maintain its growth momentum for a decade, while India's has not been able to hold up for even three years. "Serious companies are going to grow at a much slower pace, and some may even de-grow this year," he says. Unless major policy decisions are made by New Delhi immediately to keep the economy on the growth path, he says, "India will slow down even further."

New Delhi defends its four year reign in India. "We've had 9% growth for four years in a row," says Sanjaya Baru, media adviser to Prime Minister Singh. "That is unprecedented." He attributes it to the increasing rate of investment, up from 28% of GDP to 35% currently, "close to most ASEAN economies," though he admits that a large part is from the private sector. "Yes, there is a fiscal problem, but there's a price to be paid for coalition politics," adds Baru. So having growth drop "from 9% to 7% is not grim."

Social Backlash?
Chetan Modi, head of Moody's India, says the increasingly high cost of doing business in India may force global investors who had set up base in India—especially financial-services players—to move to more affordable and efficient hubs, such as Singapore and Hong Kong. If the economy slows and inflation continues to accelerate, says Sherman Chan, economist at Moody's Economy.com, "social unrest is possible."

In fact, India is becoming a dangerous social cauldron. The wealth harvested by the reforms of previous governments has made itself evident in the luxury cars and apartments in India's big cities, leaving much of India full of aspirations but few means to achieve them. There is a severe shortage of colleges, yet a plan to build 1,500 universities gathers dust. The Communists in the ruling coalition are against both globalization and industrialization, so without new factories being built, employment growth has been almost stagnant, rising to just 2%—a disappointing rate in a country where an estimated 14 million youths enter the workforce every year, but just 1 million get jobs in the regulated, above-ground economy.

Meanwhile, few expect any bold moves New Delhi, especially with national elections due in 2009 and five important state elections scheduled before the end of this year. Thus far, the ruling Congress party's record has been poor; it has lost almost every state election this year and is likely to lose all five of the upcoming ones.

The big hope for a return to the course of reform in India, businessmen hope, will be a new government in New Delhi next year. The gravest danger is that India's messy coalition politics will bring into power another indecisive alliance that will keep the country in policy limbo for another five years. If so, says S&P's Gokarn, it's a meltdown scenario: growth slipping below 6.5%, accelerating the chances of India reverting to its 1991 status when it was plunged into a balance-of-payments crisis.

Source:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2008/gb2008071_743900.htm

20000 Were Killed by Trains in Mumbai in 5 Years

Indian media often shout the human rights and democracy in India. But so what? A recent report shows that more than 20,000 people were killed by trains in Mumbai alone in 5 years.

Yes, I am not wrong. It is astonishing 20,000 ceased lives in India's finnacial captial and most rich city in a short 5 years. More ridiculously, If I am not wrong, the public transportation system in this "shining" city should be in the hands of an elected government.

India's Central and Western Railway was forced this week to release the harrowing data, showing at least 20,706 people have died over the past five years, after a Mumbai activist, Chetan Kothari, filed a request under the country's Right to Information Act.

The maximum deaths are due to people falling off crowded trains and electrocution of people sitting on the top of the train," Sharma said. He said many others were hit by trains when they tried to run across the tracks instead of using bridges.
. Source.

India, Please Take Care of Human Lives Before Talking Any Other Rights.

Beijing opens massive airport terminal

Beijing's new international air terminal, which opened today in time for the Summer Olympics surge, attracts and embodies superlatives. It also embodies the new China, a country racing headlong into the future fueled by an economy on fire.

For many countries increasingly worried about how competitive and fast-moving China is, this $2.8-billion project provides one more reason to fret. China's authoritarian system can certainly move. At its peak, the construction site had 50,000 workers toiling around the clock.

"Most Western politicians wouldn't admit agreeing to that system, but they're very jealous," said Rory McGowan, Beijing-based director of global engineering firm Ove Arup & Partners, which worked on the project. The Chinese "can react to decisions four or five times faster than we can [in the West] because China runs the way it does." China has a long history of awing visitors with structures that evoke size and power, epitomized by the Forbidden City.

The terminal measures about 10.6 million square feet. By comparison, the Pentagon, often described as the largest office building in the world, is 6.5 million square feet. And the enormous terminal is astride a runway able to handle the new Airbus A380 superjumbo jets. It's got all manner of bells and whistles, including "barrier-free" facilities for the disabled, floor tracking to guide the blind, and multi-denominational prayer rooms in an officially atheist country. It also has baby-changing facilities galore and 26 smoking rooms with advanced filtering systems -- in short, a lot of stuff you probably won't see again during your stay in China.

The designers put a premium on air, light, greenery and distinct Chinese characteristics. The sloping roof is meant to evoke a dragon, with triangular skylights resembling scales. Feng shui principles were incorporated into the design, and the interior is decorated in colors that hold special meaning for Chinese.

"Feng shui has a scientific and a superstitious side," said Shao Weiping, principal architect with Beijing Architectural Design. "We used the scientific side."

Six airlines will start flying from Beijing's massive terminal today, and flag carrier Air China and others will move from the airport's two older terminals in March. Air China and United are the only airlines offering nonstop service from Beijing to LAX. United's flights will also move to the new terminal next month.

The new terminal will boost the airport's annual capacity by tens of millions of passengers to 82 million, a target planners originally expected to hit around 2015, but now believe could come years earlier. A second international airport is already under consideration.

Excerpted from LA Time.

Chinese Engineering: Tibet Railway - By Discovery Channel

China Links Two 20-Mile Bridges

The final link in a 20-mile bridge, said to be the world's longest cable-stayed structure of its kind, was connected Monday over China's Yangtze River, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The 6.45 billion yuan ($846 million) Sutong Bridge, linking the cities of Nantong and Changshu near the garden city of Suzhou, has the longest span of any cable-stayed bridge, at 3,569.55 feet, the report said.

The span of a bridge is the distance between the structure's main towers. The previous longest span in a cable-stayed bridge was the Tatara Bridge in Japan, part of a series of bridges linking the main Japanese island of Honshu with Shikoku. Its longest span is 2,920 feet.

The Yangtze River Delta, where the bridge is located, is in the midst of a massive construction boom that is bringing modern transport links to the Shanghai region, one of China's fastest growing industrial hubs.

On June 26, authorities plan to inaugurate the 22.5-mile Hangzhou Bay bridge, a structure that will link Shanghai with the port city of Ningbo to the south.

Source.


Sutong Bridge. Construction of the bridge started in June 2003 and will be finished in 2008.



The location of Hangzhou Bay Bridge. The construction of the bridge started in June 2003 too. The bridge will be completed in 2009

Chinese Go after Broadband when cell phone becoming hot in India

Some data from guardian's news:

According to the internet consultancy Point Topic, 298 million people had broadband at the end of March and that is already estimated to have shot over 300 million.

US leads the pack with more than 60 million subscribers.

China now has more than 56 million from 41 million users a year ago.

Japan ranked third, with 26.5 million broadband users at the end of March this year.

Germany is fourth at more than 16 million.

France takes the fifth spot with 15.3 million.

Penetration in China is 14.35% while in India penetration stands at just 1.15% of the country's estimated 200 million households.

Obviously, most of Indians can only afford US$25 cell phones, but not for more expensive personal computers for internet.

Chinese ports' cargo handling capacity to reach 8 billion tonnes by 2010

Mumbai: The cargo handling capacity of China's ports is expected to reach eight billion tonnes and 170 million TEUs in 2010 amidst a trade boom and continued economic expansion.

The combined cargo handling capacity of China's ports totalled 5.6 billion tonnes and 93 million TEUs (twenty-foot container equivalent units) last year, the largest in the world for four consecutive years, the head of China Communication and Transportation Association, Qian Yongchang, said.

China had 12 ports with throughput capacities exceeding 100 million tonnes last year. Shanghai port handled 530 million tonnes of cargo last year, making it the busiest in the world.

China had been investing heavily in port construction as the national economy soars and foreign trade increases steadily. In 2006, more than 160 construction projects kicked off on China's seaports, involving 60 billion yuan, up 30 per cent year-on-year.

China's exports reached $252.1 billion, up 27.8 per cent, while imports were valued at $205.7 billion, up 18.2 per cent, figures from Chinese customs showed.

The priority of the investment in port construction would be on expanding capacity and improving comprehensive services, Mr Qian said.

China is expected to replace Germany as the world's second largest trader this year with $2.1 trillion in foreign trade and may overtake the US to become the world's largest trader by the end of the decade. China's foreign trade in the first three months totalled $457.7 billion, up 23.3 per cent year-on-year.


Source: http://www.domain-b.com/industry/shipping/20070523_capacity.htm

The Trouble With India

The following article was from BusinessWeek. It talks about the infrastructural problem India is facing today. That include roads, airports, power supplies, public transportation systems, sewerage systems. But it fogot to mention the water supply system that is vital for urban residents and irrigation systems that is important for more than 70% of indians.

Many people believe that the difference between today's China and India was caused by China's earlier reform. But China actually did much better in the infrastructure before the reform. For example, China built 25,000KM of railways and constructed majority of irrigation system for farming between 1949-1980, or before the reform. China could produce around 40 million tons of iron and steel each year in 1980, which is similar to India's annual output today. China's grain output increased from 130 million tons in 1949 to 280 million tons in 1980 and reached toppoint of 500 million tons in 1990s. But even today, India's record is 250 million tons on more arable land. China's literate rate reached 80% before the reform, which was much higher than today's India whose literate rate today is only around 60%. China did not have any external or internal debts when China started reform. All of the above have set solidindustrial, agricultural, and social foundation for China's development after the reform. Unfortunately most people simply ignore the facts.

India government is good at drawing a splendid picture for future and finding "good" excuses for today's problems.

Crumbling roads, jammed airports, and power blackouts could hobble growth

When foreigners say Bangalore is India's version of Silicon Valley, the high-tech office park called Electronics City is what they're often thinking of. But however much Californians might hate traffic-clogged Route 101, the main drag though the Valley, it has nothing on Hosur Road. This potholed, four-lane stretch of gritty pavement—the primary access to Electronics City—is pure chaos. Cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, taxis, rickshaws, cows, donkeys, and dogs jostle for every inch of the roadway as horns blare and brakes squeal. Drivers run red lights and jam their vehicles into any available space, paying no mind to pedestrians clustered desperately on median strips like shipwrecked sailors.

Pass through the six-foot-high concrete walls into Electronics City, though, and the loudest sounds you hear are the chirping of birds and the whirr of electric carts that whisk visitors from one steel-and-glass building to the next. Young men and women stroll the manicured pathways that wend their way through the leafy 80-acre spread or coast quietly on bicycles along the smooth asphalt roads.

With virtually no mass transit in Bangalore, Indian technology firm Infosys Technologies Ltd. spends $5 million a year on buses, minivans, and taxis to transport its 18,000 employees to and from Electronics City. And traffic jams mean workers can spend upwards of four hours commuting each day. "India has underinvested in infrastructure for 60 years, and we're behind what we need by 10 to 12 years," says T.V. Mohandas Pai, director of human resources for Infosys.

India's high-tech services industry has set the country's economic flywheel spinning. Growth is running at 9%-plus this year. The likes of Wal-Mart (WMT ), Vodafone (VOD ), and Citigroup (C ) are placing multibillion-dollar bets on the country, lured by its 300 million-strong middle class. In spite of a recent drop, the Bombay stock exchange's benchmark Sensex index is still up more than 40% since June. Real estate has shot through the roof, with some prices doubling in the past year.

But this economic boom is being built on the shakiest of foundations. Highways, modern bridges, world-class airports, reliable power, and clean water are in desperately short supply. And what's already there is literally crumbling under the weight of progress. In December, a bridge in eastern India collapsed, killing 34 passengers in a train rumbling underneath. Economic losses from congestion and poor roads alone are as high as $6 billion a year, says Gajendra Haldea, an adviser to the federal Planning Commission.

For all its importance, the tech services sector employs just 1.6 million people, and it doesn't rely on good roads and bridges to get its work done. India needs manufacturing to boom if it is to boost exports and create jobs for the 10 million young people who enter the workforce each year. Suddenly, good infrastructure matters a lot more. Yet industry is hobbled by overcrowded highways where speeds average just 20 miles per hour. Some ports rely on armies of laborers to unload cargo from trucks and lug it onto ships. Across the state of Maharashtra, major cities lose power one day a week to relieve pressure on the grid. In Pune, a city of 4.5 million, it's lights out every Thursday—forcing factories to maintain expensive backup generators. Government officials were shocked last year when Intel Corp. (INTC ) chose Vietnam over India as the site for a new chip assembly plant. Although Intel declined to comment, industry insiders say the reason was largely the lack of reliable power and water in India.

Add up this litany of woes and you understand why India's exports total less than 1% of global trade, compared with 7% for China. Says Infosys Chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy: "If our infrastructure gets delayed, our economic development, job creation, and foreign investment get delayed. Our economic agenda gets delayed—if not derailed."

The infrastructure deficit is so critical that it could prevent India from achieving the prosperity that finally seems to be within its grasp. Without reliable power and water and a modern transportation network, the chasm between India's moneyed elite and its 800 million poor will continue to widen, potentially destabilizing the country. Jagdish N. Bhagwati, a professor at Columbia University, figures gross domestic product growth would run two percentage points higher if the country had decent roads, railways, and power. "We're bursting at the seams," says Kamal Nath, India's Commerce & Industry Minister. Without better infrastructure, "we can't continue with the growth rates we have had."

The problems are even contributing to overheating in the economy. Inflation spiked in the first week of February to a two-year high of 6.7%, due in part to bottlenecks caused by the country's lousy transport network. Up to 40% of farm produce is lost because it rots in the fields or spoils en route to consumers, which contributes to rising prices for staples such as lentils and onions.

India today is about where China was a decade ago. Back then, China's economy was shifting into overdrive, but its roads and power grid weren't up to the task. So Beijing launched a massive upgrade initiative, building more than 25,000 miles of expressways that now crisscross the country and are as good as the best roads in the U.S. or Europe. India, by contrast, has just 3,700 miles of such highways. It's no wonder that when foreign companies weigh putting new plants in China vs. India to produce global exports, China more often wins out.

China's lead in infrastructure is likely to grow, too. Beijing plows about 9% of its GDP into public works, compared with New Delhi's 4%. And because of its authoritarian government, China gets faster results. "If you have to build a road in China, just a handful of people need to make a decision," says Daniel Vasella, chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Novartis (NVS ). "If you want to build a road in India, it'll take 10 years of discussion before you get a decision."

Blame it partly on India's revolving-door democracy. Political parties typically hold power for just one five-year term before disgruntled voters, swayed by populist promises from the opposition, kick them out of office. In elections last year in the state of Tamil Nadu, for instance, a new government was voted in after it pledged to give free color TVs to poor families. "In a sanely organized society you can get a lot done. Not here," says Jayaprakash Narayan, head of Lok Satta, or People Power, a national reform party.

Then there's "leakage"—India's euphemism for rampant corruption. Nearly all sectors of officialdom are riddled with graft, from neighborhood cops to district bureaucrats to state ministers. Indian truckers pay about $5 billion a year in bribes, according to the watchdog group Transparency International. Corruption delays infrastructure projects and raises costs for those that move ahead.

Fortunately, after decades of underinvestment and political inertia, India's political leadership has awakened to the magnitude of the infrastructure crisis. A handful of major projects have been completed; others are moving forward. Work on the Golden Quadrilateral—a $12 billion initiative spanning more than 3,000 miles of four- and six-lane expressways connecting Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai—is due to be completed this year. The first phase of a new subway in New Delhi finished in late 2005 on budget and ahead of schedule. And new airports are under construction in Bangalore and Hyderabad, with more planned elsewhere. "We have to improve the quality of our infrastructure," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a gathering of tech industry leaders in Mumbai on Feb. 9. "It's a priority of our government."

Singh, in fact, is promising a Marshall Plan-scale effort. The government estimates public and private organizations will chip in $330 billion to $500 billion over the next five years for highways, power generation, ports, and airports. In addition, leading conglomerates have pledged to overhaul the retailing sector. That will require infrastructure upgrades along the entire food distribution chain, from farm fields to store shelves.

Envisioning a brand-new India is the easy part; paying for it is another matter. By necessity, since the country's public debt stands at 82% of GDP, the 11th-worst ranking in the world, much of the money for these new projects will have to come from private sources. Yet India captured only $8 billion in foreign direct investment last year, compared with China's $63 billion. "Having grandiose plans isn't enough," says Yale University economics professor T.N. Srinivasan.

Just about every foreign company operating in India has a horror story of the hardships of doing business there. Nokia Corp. (NOK ) saw thousands of its cellular phones ruined last October when a shipment from its factory in Chennai was soaked by rain because there was no room to warehouse the crates of handsets at the local airport. Japan's Maruti Suzuki says trucking its cars 900 miles from its factory in Gurgaon to the port in Mumbai can take up to 10 days. That's partly due to delays at the three state borders along the way, where drivers are stalled as officials check their papers. But it's also because big rigs are barred from India's congested cities during the day, when they might bring dense traffic to a standstill. Once at the port, the Japanese company's autos can wait weeks for the next outbound ship because there's not enough dock space for cargo carriers to load and unload.

India's summer monsoons wreak havoc, too. Even relatively light rains can choke sewers, flood streets, and paralyze a city, while downpours are devastating. Two years ago, Florida-based contract manufacturer Jabil Circuit Inc. saw shipments of computers and networking gear from its plant near Mumbai delayed for five days after an epic storm. "In our business, five days is a really long time," says William D. Muir Jr., who oversees Jabil's Asian operations.

Companies often have no choice but to make the best of a bad situation. Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO ), the American networking equipment giant, has had a research and development office in India since 1999 and already has 2,000 engineers in the country. To supply the country's fast-growing telecommunications industry, Cisco decided last year to try its hand at making some parts locally. In December it contracted with another company to build Internet phones in the southeastern city of Chennai. Although Cisco says the quality of the workmanship is up to snuff, it has to fly parts in because the ports are so slow—and getting them to the factory right when they're needed is proving nettlesome. "We believe in manufacturing in India, but we don't believe in logistics in India—yet," says Wim Elfrink, Cisco's chief globalization officer. Elfrink adds that unless the Chennai operation demonstrates it can run as efficiently as Cisco setups elsewhere, it won't go into full production as planned this summer.

Even the world's largest maker of infrastructure equipment is constrained by India's feeble underpinnings. General Electric Co. (GE ) last year sold $1.2 billion worth of gear such as power generators and locomotives in India, more than double what it billed in 2005. To meet that surging demand, it is scrambling to find a location where it can manufacture locomotives in partnership with India Railways. But when GE dispatched three employees to survey a potential site the railway favored in the northern state of Bihar, the trio returned discouraged. It took five hours to drive the 50 miles from the airport to the site, and when they got there they found...nothing. "No roads, no power, no schools, no water, no hospitals, no housing," says Pratyush Kumar, president of GE Infrastructure in India. "We'd have to create everything from scratch," including many miles of railroad tracks to get the locomotives out to the main lines.

But there is a silver lining for GE and other international giants: India's infrastructure deficit could yield huge opportunities. American executives who traveled to India last November on the largest U.S. trade mission ever were tantalized by the possibilities. Jennifer Thompson, director of international planning at Oshkosh Truck Corp. (OSK ), viewed construction projects where swarms of workers carried wet concrete in buckets to be poured. That told her there's great potential in India for selling Oshkosh's mixer trucks. "There are infrastructure challenges, but we see a lot of opportunities to help them meet those challenges," she says.

That explains why so many multinationals are flocking to India. Take hotel construction: In a country with only 25,000 tourist-class hotel rooms (compared with more than 140,000 in Las Vegas alone), companies including Hilton (HLT ), Wyndham (WYN ), and Ramada have plans for 75,000 rooms on their drawing boards. Or consider telecom. Because of deregulation and ferocious demand, India boasts the fastest growth in cell-phone service anywhere, with companies adding some 6 million new customers a month. No wonder Britain's Vodafone Group PLC (VOD ) just ponied up $11 billion for a controlling interest in Hutchison Essar, India's No. 4 mobile carrier. U.S. private equity outfits also want in on the action. On Feb. 15, Blackstone Group and Citigroup announced they are teaming up with the Indian government and the Infrastructure Development Finance Corp. to set up a $5 billion fund for infrastructure investments in India.

But while the laws of supply and demand would argue that India's infrastructure gap can be filled, that logic ignores the corrosive effect of the country's politics. To gain the favor of voters, Indian politicians have long subsidized electricity and water for farmers, a policy that has discouraged private investment in those areas. That's what wrecked the now-infamous Dabhol Power plant. In the late 1990s, Enron, GE, and Bechtel spent a total of $2.8 billion building a huge complex near Mumbai capable of producing more than 2,000 megawatts of electricity. But a government power authority set prices so low that it was uneconomical for Dabhol to operate, and the whole deal fell apart. (The plant, taken over by an Indian organization, now runs only fitfully.) A 2001 law was supposed to create a framework to support private investment in power generation. But according to American construction company executives, it's not working well. "Everybody knows what needs to be done, but they have great difficulty doing it," says one of the Americans. "If the party in opposition offers subsidized power, the party in power has to give subsidized power to get reelected."

Politicians who refuse to play the game pay a steep price. N. Chandrababu Naidu, the former chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, transformed the state capital of Hyderabad from a backwater into a high-tech destination by building new roads, widening others, and aggressively carving out land for factories and office parks. Google (GOOG ), IBM (IBM ), Microsoft (MSFT ), and Motorola (MOT ) have all built R&D facilities there.

His reward? Voters tossed him out of office two years ago. During his decade in power, Naidu didn't do enough for rural areas, and his challenger promised to channel state funds into irrigation projects and electricity subsidies. "Naidu thought economics were more important than politics. He was wrong," says V.S. Rao, director of the Birla Institute of Technology & Science in Hyderabad. Naidu, 56, is plotting a comeback in elections two years hence. This time, he's preaching a new gospel. "You can't just target growth," says a chastened Naidu. "You have to create policies that make the wealth trickle down to the common man."

But even when politicians say they're beefing up infrastructure, it rarely helps the poorest Indians. Agriculture is stagnant in part because of a lack of the most rudimentary of roads to get to and from fields. N. Tarupthurai, for instance, scratches out a living from a five-acre plot in Jinnuru, a village in northeastern Andhra Pradesh. But his fields are more than a mile from the nearest paved road, so each day the 40-year-old Tarupthurai must carry his tools, seeds, fertilizer, and crops down a dirt path on his back or on his bicycle. "I have asked for a road, and the government says it's under consideration," says the mustachioed, curly-haired farmer. Then he shrugs.

One reason little practical help makes it from the seats of power to India's impoverished villages is that so much money gets siphoned off along the way. With corrupt officials skimming at every step, many public works projects either go over budget or are never completed. "You figure that 25% of the cost goes to corruption," says Verghese Jacob, head of the Byrraju Foundation, which promotes rural development. "And then they do such a bad job that the road falls apart in one year and has to be patched over again," Jacob says as he jostles along in a car on a potholed byway outside Hyderabad.

None of the solutions to India's infrastructure challenges are simple, but business leaders, some enlightened government officials, and even ordinary citizens are chipping in to make things better. The most potent weapon India's reformers have against corruption is transparency. Last October a new right-to-information law went into effect requiring both central and state governments to divulge information about contracts, hiring, and expenditures to any citizen who requests it. The country is also putting to work its vaunted technology prowess to police the government. Officials in 200 districts are using software from Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. to help monitor a government program that offers every rural household a guarantee of 100 days of work per year. Most of this labor goes into public works. To minimize "leakage," the TCS software tracks every expenditure—and makes all of the information available real-time on a Web site accessible to anyone.

Sometimes frustrated Indians take matters into their own hands. Tired of spending four-plus hours a day in traffic, Aruna Newton last fall helped organize something of a women's crusade to speed up infrastructure improvements. Nearly 15,000 volunteers now monitor key road projects and meet with state officials to press for action. They even enlisted the state chief minister's mother, who helped get his attention. "It's about the collective power of the people," says Newton, a 40-year-old vice-president for Infosys. "I just wish building a road was as easy as writing a software program."

Increasingly, companies trying to expand in India have the government as a willing partner rather than a roadblock. The state of Andhra Pradesh rolled out the red carpet last year for MAS Holdings Ltd. of Sri Lanka, South Asia's largest garment manufacturer. It promised subsidized electricity, new access roads, and even a deepwater port if the company would place a huge industrial park on the southern coast. Now MAS Holdings plans to build a cluster of factories that will eventually employ 30,000 production workers. And it chose India over China. "The government support was absolutely vital," says John Chiramel, India director for MAS Holdings. "If we can work together, there's no stopping growth in this country."

A key to getting massive projects off the drawing boards is forming public-private partnerships where the government and companies share costs, risks, and rewards. In 2005, India passed a groundbreaking law permitting officials to tap such partnerships for infrastructure initiatives. Developers ante up most of the money, collect tolls or other usage fees, and eventually hand the facilities back to the government.

The first project to take advantage of the new law is the $430 million international airport scheduled to open next year in Bangalore. The facility is designed to handle 11.5 million passengers per year—nearly double the capacity of the overburdened existing airport. It will be owned by a private company, which will turn it over to the Karnataka state government after 60 years. Global engineering and equipment giant Siemens (SI ) is helping to build the facility, and Switzerland's Unique Ltd. will manage it. These companies are also equity investors. The state had to contribute just 18% of the cost. Without such an arrangement, Karnataka wouldn't be getting a new airport.

A lot of India's hopes rest on the airport deal's success. If it proves the viability of public-private partnerships, more such ventures could come pouring in. A visit to the site instills confidence. Project manager Sivaramakrishnan S. Iyer is a crusty veteran of mammoth infrastructure ventures throughout South Asia and the Mideast. Wearing a scuffed hardhat, with a two-day growth of white stubble on his face, he surveys the site from a 2.5-mile-long bed of crushed granite that will be the runway. Work goes on seven days a week, 18 hours a day. Iyer is intent on wrapping up on schedule in April, 2008. "We have the will to do it, and it will be done," he says.

Will the airport open on time? That's not within Iyer's control. Two government authorities are responsible for building the road that leads to the airport, and they're locked in a dispute over how to do it. Work hasn't started.

And so it goes in India. Unless the nation shakes off its legacy of bureaucracy, politics, and corruption, its ability to build adequate infrastructure will remain in doubt. So will its economic destiny.


By Steve Hamm, with Nandini Lakshman in Mumbai

Some Numbers about China in 2006

2006 passed, data about China in 2006 come out one by one. I compile this post so that people who care about or want to understand China feel easy in getting the data in one place.

Any viewers are welcome to post the data you find in you reply. I will update this post when I think the data is reliable.

1. Economy in General
Preliminary calculations from National Bureau of Statistics show that China's gross domestic product (GDP) hit 20,940.7 billion yuan in 2006, up 10.7 percent over 2005.
At the end of 2006, the total number of employees was 764 million, 5.75 million more than the end of 2005. National tax revenue stood at 3,763.6 billion yuan (excluding tariffs, farmland use tax and deed tax), an increase of 21.9 percent.
In 2006, the per capita net income of farmers was 3,587 yuan, rising 7.4 percent in real terms; the per capita disposable income of urban residents was 11,759 yuan, rising 10.4 percent.
At the end of last year, there were still 21.48 million people living below the poverty line in rural areas (earnings less than 693 yuan), 2.17 million less than at the end of 2005.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353783.html

2. Social Development
The nation had a total population of 1,314.48 million, 6.92 million more than 2005. The urban population stood at 577.06 million and the rural population at 737.42 million. The urbanization rate grew 0.93% to 43.9%. The urbanization rates from 2002 to 2005 were 39.1, 40.5, 41.8 and 43 percent respectively.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353783.html

Male Chinese accounted for 51.5 per cent of the population. The gender imbalance is a growing problem in China. The ratio of males to female newborns stood at 119.25 to 100 in 2006.
Source: http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0301/breaking13.htm

China witnessed frequent natural disasters which claimed 3,186 lives in 2006.
Natural disasters damaged 41 million hectares of farmland, toppled down 1.93 million houses and forced 13.84 million people to leave their homes, causing direct economic losses of 252.8 billion yuan.
The central and local governments earmarked more than 10 billion yuan (about 1.25 billion U.S. dollars) last year in disaster relief and salvation.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/01/eng20070301_353133.html

3. Agriculture
In 2006 China recorded a grain output of 497.46 million tons, rising 2.8 percent.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/01/eng20070301_353189.html

The output of cotton was 6.73 million tons in 2005, up by 17.8 percent over the previous year.
The total outputs of meat and eggswere expected to reach 80 million tons and 29.5 million tons in 2005, up by 4.5 percent and 3.0 percent respectively over the previous year.
Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=31601

4. Industry
According to the data released by National Bureanu of Statistis of China, China's Steel products consumption moved up 17.2% to 450 million tonnes. Aluminium consumption rised 32.1% to 8.65 million tonnes. Copper consumption dropped 4% to 3.72 million tonnes as increased the use of aluminium as a substitute due to the high copper price. China's ethylene consumption rose 23.9% to 9.39 million tonnes while cement increased 14.5% to 1.2 billion tonnes. China burned 2.37 billion tons of coal in 2006, increased by 9.6%. Oil comsumption increased 7.1% to 320 million tons.
Source: http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=29478

In 2006, the value added of industrial sector was up by 12.5 percent over the previous year. Of this total, the value added of the industrial enterprises above the designated size was up by 16.6 percent.
The sales ratio was 98.1 percent for the industrial enterprises above the designated size. In 2006, the amount of profits made by those enterprises was 1,878.4 billion yuan, an increase of 31.0 percent.
Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=31601&page=2

China recorded 4.75 trillion Yuan in electronic product sales revenue in 2006, up 23.6 percent on 2005.
Source: http://www.pacificepoch.com/newsstories/90717_0_5_0_M/

China produced 466.85 mln tons of steel products in 2006, up 24.45 pct year-on-year. crude steel output totaled 418.78 mln tons, up 18.48 pct, while pig iron output gained 19.78 pct to 404.17 mln tons.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/02/01/afx3388004.html

China's iron and steel industry saw its profit surge 30 per cent year on year to a record $22 billion in 2006. The iron and steel industry secured 279.5 billion yuan in pre-tax profit in 2006, an increase of 23.95 per cent over the previous year. China's stainless steel output jumped by a whopping 68 per cent year on year to 5.3 million tonnes, ranking the first in the world.
Source: http://www.domain-b.com/industry/steel/20070226_profit.html

China's gold output rose by 7.15 tonnes in 2006 to a record 240.08 tonnes.
Source: http://www.diamonds.net/news/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=16891

China's crude output rose a mere 1.7 pct to 183.68 mln tons in 2006.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2007/02/12/afx3420562.html

China's share of the world VLCC market increased to 36.2 percent in 2006, not far below Korea's 40 percent share.
Source: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200703/200703020010.html

In 2006 China's auto industry sold 7.22 million auto vehicles, increasing 25 percent over 2005. China's automobile industry made a profit of 76.8 billion yuan (approximately 10 billion US dollars) in 2006, up 46 percent from the previous year. and the country become the world's second largest auto market.
China's automakers last year produced 7.28 million vehicles, up 27.32 percent over the previous year, No. 3 in the world.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200702/20/eng20070220_351356.html

Chinese shipbuilders produced 14.52 million deadweight tons last year, nearly 20 percent of the world's total. The industry's total profits doubled last year to reach a record high of 9.6 billion yuan, more than the combined profits of the previous five years.
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-02/14/content_5738059.htm

China's two largest shipbuilding companies - China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) - both made rapid development. CSSC completed 103 ships with a total carrying capacity of 6.02 million tons. CSSC received orders for ships with a combined carrying capacity of 22.18 million tons last year. CSIC's main business income reached 62.2 billion yuan and it received orders for ships with a combined carrying capacity of 6.2 million tons.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200701/31/eng20070131_346422.html

Revenue from China's local semiconductor chip industry grew more than 43 per cent to exceed $13bn in 2006.
Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/news/2186292/china-chips-13bn-2006

5. Service Industry
The fixed asset investment in China’s telecom sector touched the mark of 218.69 Billion Yuan (i.e. US$ 28 Billion) in the year 2006, An YOY increase of 7.5%.
The telecom sector, comprising fixed line phone links, Internet services, mobile phone connections, raked in 648 Billion Yuan (i.e. US$ 83 Billion) in revenues.
In the year 2006, mobile subscribers’ number in China touched 461 Million, 68 Million up from previous year (2005). In 2006, there were about 368 Million fixed line phone users throughout the nation, representing 17 million up against previous year.
Source: http://www.freepressreleases.co.uk/

China had 137 million Internet users by the end of last year, an increase of 23.4 percent year-on-year. The number of broadband users hit 90.7 million by 2006, up 41.1 percent year-on-year, while about 17 million mobile phones users now use their handsets to access the Internet.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353642.html

China's advertising market revenue reached 386.6 billion yuan ($49.9 billion) in 2006, led by television, which claimed 81 percent of the total.
Source: http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2007-02-16T090454Z_01_PEK150834_RTRIDST_0_MEDIA-NIELSEN-CHINA.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna

China's airline safety record is on a par with North America's and surpasses that of Europe. According to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, in the 10 years ended in 2005, there were 0.4 accidents per million takeoffs in the U.S., 0.5 in China, 0.7 in Europe, 2.5 in Latin America and 11.7 in Africa.
Source: http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070302/BUSINESS01/703020352/1066

Chinese airports reported passenger traffic growth of 16.7 pct in 2006 to 331.97 mln in 2006.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/03/21/afx3536051.html

Retail sales of China's hotel and catering sector hit 1.03 trillion yuan in 2006, an increase of 16.4 percent year on year. The sector accounted for 13.5 percent of the country's total retail sales of consumer goods in 2006.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/20/eng20070320_359444.html


Digital TV subscriptions in China reached 12 million at the end of 2006, up from 6.5 million.
Source: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117960354.html?categoryid=18&cs=1

China's retail sales rose 13.7 percent to 7.64 trillion yuan ($979.6 billion) in 2006.
Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2007-01/26/content_796035.htm

6. Education
A total of 4.13 million students graduated from higher education institutions in 2006, 750,000 more than last year. 1.24 million of them couldn't find jobs that match their majors.
Source: http://www.china.org.cn/english/education/189340.htm

7. Science and Technology
China spent 294.3 billion yuan on research and development in 2006, 20.1 percent more than the previous year and 1.41 percent of GDP. But this is still less than 2% in the developed world. Funds allocated for fundamental research programs reached 14.8 billion yuan.
a total of 1,409 projects under the National Key Technology Research and Development Program and 2,841 projects under the Hi-tech Research and Development Program (the 863 Program) were implemented.
China added seven new national engineering research centers and three national engineering laboratories.
A total of 268,000 patents were approved in 2006, of which 224,000 were domestic patents, accounting for 83.5 percent of the total. A total of 58,000 patents for new inventions were given, of which 25,000 were domestic, accounting for 43.4 percent.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353783.html

The patent application fillings to PCT from China jumped 56.8% to 3910 in 2006. This made China as the 8th in the world. China's Huawei was 13th on the top 20 list worldwide in 2006, up 24 places from 2005.
Source: http://www.wipo.int/edocs/prdocs/en/2007/wipo_pr_2007_476.html

8. Trade
China import/export trade value reached US$1,760.7 trillion in 2006, up 23.8 percent from 2005.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353783.html

China's trade surplus amounted to US$177.5 billion in 2006, up 74 percent over 2005.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353781.html

China's net oil import was up 19.6 pct year-on-year at 162.87 mln tons last year.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2007/02/12/afx3420562.html

Airbus delivered 76 new aircraft to China and received orders for 159 in 2006. Boeing delivered 28 and received orders for 112.
Source: http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070302/BUSINESS01/703020352/1066

China emerged the world's largest exporter of steel last year, with an export volume of 43 million tonnes. China imported 2.5 million tonnes of stainless steel products in 2006, down 20.13 per cent.
Source: http://www.domain-b.com/industry/steel/20070226_profit.html

The export volume of China's shipbuilding industry surged 74 percent to 8.11 billion U.S. dollars in 2006.
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-02/14/content_5738059.htm

The China's farm products export hit US$31.03 billion , a 14.1% increase over 2005.
Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-01/31/content_5677424.htm

9. Infrastructure
China's power capacityhad expanded by 102 gigawatts in 2006, or roughly equal to the entire capacity of the UK and Thailand combined.
Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e66cde98-b5fc-11db-9eea-0000779e2340.html

10. Finance
China's forex reserve topped one trillion US dollar mark at the end of 2006.
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200703/02/eng20070302_353781

Chinese government's budget deficit in 2006 was only 275 billion yuan, 20 billion yuan less than targeted set at the beginning of 2006.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aY5kdkPadPjA&refer=asia

China's trains to run at over 200 km/h from April

Chinese Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun told an annual work conference that beginning April 18, trains on lines such as Beijing-Harbin, Beijing-Shanghai, Beijing-Guangzhou, Guangzhou-Shenzhen and Jinan-Qingdao will travel at speeds of 200 km per hour, with certain sections reaching 250 km per hour.

Preparation work for the speed boost -- including safety tests, improvement of technical guarantee systems and staff training -- has been finished, he said.

More details could be reached here.

Other resources said that there will be total of more than 6,000KM railroads on which the passenger trains can run at more than 200KM/hour after the speed-boost in April.

Metros neck deep in murky water in India

New Delhi: Over 1,600 people die of water-borne diseases like diarrhoea and Hepatitis in India every day.

A CNN-IBN and Consumer Voice special investigation reveals that the quality of water supplied by municipal corporations in India's metros is unfit for consumption and can cause potentially fatal diseases.

Scientists from an National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) accredited lab, the Food Research Analysis Centre in Delhi, collected water samples from Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai and tested them for the level of contamination.

With chemical and microbial contamination within acceptable limits, water sample collected from Mumbai fared best. In Delhi, samples taken from a Delhi Jal Board tanker, showed high levels of the disease-causing Coliform bacteria.

In Chennai, Coliform bacteria and E Coli pathogen, responsible for several water-borne diseases, were present in most samples. The water samples also showed high iron contamination.

Almost 42 per cent of the water samples collected from Kolkata recorded hardness, and some showed unsafe levels of Coliform bacteria.

"This is not acceptable by any standards. The maximum permissible limit is 10,000 and Coliform organisms of more than 11,000 is just unacceptable. The level of E coli, which is pathogenic, found in the water is 11,000," says Prof L M Nath, a public health expert.

Clearly, the water supplied to consumers by the Chennai Municipality is unfit for human consumption, showing dangerously high levels of E coli and Coliform bacteria.


"The contamination happens particularly where the pipes are old and leaky. They run alongside a drain or sewage and because we do not have continuous water supply, so when the water pump goes off, then the pressure in the pipe gets low and it starts to suck sewage," explains Prof Nath.

"The sewage water is mixed with the metro water pipelines. You can actually see the black dust in the water supply in the building in this area," says Senthil Kumar, a resident of Chennai.

Other residents like R Gonnaraj say they are scared to use this water. "That is why, we buy water from outside for drinking," he says.

Consumers in Kolkata as well, are being supplied water that is unfit for consumption.

"None of us have got the confidence on the level of purity that is required for the water to be suitable for drinking," says J M Ganguly, a resident of Kolkata.

Microbial contamination of municipal water supply make consumers in India's metro cities vulnerable to water-borne diseases like Diarrhoea and Hepatitis.

Rusting water pipelines and poor maintenance of the water distribution system infrastructure, further contaminate the water. "Now, if this type of result is not spreading Hepatitis, then it is just God's grace," says Prof Nath.

If the Government cannot provide safe drinking water in the four Metros, one wonders the quality of water in the rest of the country.

(With Raksha Shetty in Mumbai, Rohini Mohan in Chennai, Saugata Mukhopadhay in Kolkata)

This report came from CNN-IBN, India. The reader's comments also verified this report.

I live in Railway Flats, Basant Lane, Cannaught Place, New Delhi. We get water supply of 10 minutes in a day. 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening. The water pressure is so low that we have to install motor on the 1st Floor to pump in water. The water is murky with a faul smell. Everyone in my family was sick now and then. We spent around Rs 15,000/- to get a reverse osmosis water purifier installed so that we can drink the murky water. Its a great irony that we live so near to so called hub of the city and we are forced to consume this sort of water supply. The plight of rest of Delhihites can be imagined.

Hydropower stations dot Yangtze River

China continues to build hydropower stations along the upper stream of Yangtze River. After the start of Xiluodu project last year, the construction of the 6-million kw Xiangjiaba hydropower station began this Sunday. Xiluodu station will have 12.6 million kilowatts of capacity.

The section of the Yangtze between Yushu in Qinghai Province and Yibin in Sichuan Province is often called the Jinsha River in China, which means the "Golden Sand River". The China Yangtze River Three Gorges Project Development Corporation has plans to build 22 more hydropower stations on the Yangtze, including two more -- Baihetan and Wudongde hydropower stations -- on the lower reaches of the Jinsha River section.

The feasibility study for the 12 million kw Baihetan hydropower station has been completed and approved by experts. Work has also started on a feasibility study for the Wudongde hydropower station that will have 7 million KW capacity. The construction of these two dams will begin in 2009 and will be finished in 2020.

The above four hydropower stations will have a combined capacity of 38.5 million kw upon completion, but the potential hydroelectric capacity of this 2,300-km section of the Yangtze is estimated at 112 million kw.

The cost of Xiangjiaba hydropower station will reach 43.4 billion yuan (about 5.43 billion U.S. dollars), it will be completed in 2015 and will be able to generate 30.7 billion kw/hour of electricity a year.

Statistics provided by the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources show that Chinese rivers could generate 540 million kw of hydroelectric power capacity. Currently, only one fifth of the total is being exploited, as compared with three fifths in developed nations.


The complete report can be accessed at here.

China puts huge investment in railroad and expressway systems

1.5 trillion RMB(US$190 billion) investment to improve China's railway system before 2010.Source

China will invest 1.5 trillion (US$190 billion) to increase the nation's rail network to over 90,000 kilometres by 2010.

"We will invest 300 billion yuan (US$38 billion) in railway construction next year," Li Guoyong, transportation director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said yesterday at the China Railway Financing Forum.

The investment, described by Li as "the biggest in China's history," would increase the size of China's rail network by almost 20 per cent.

The 1.5 trillion yuan (US$190 billion) investment includes 250 billion yuan (US$31.6 billion) for vehicle purchasing, over 600 billion yuan (US$76 billion) for railway lines and over 625 billion yuan (US$79 billion) for civil engineering.

China all anounced a US$250-billionplan for the expressway expansion in the next 30 years. This plan does not include other highway systemsSource.

The Chinese government plans to extend the country's expressway network by 85,000 kilometers in the next 30 years at an estimated cost of two trillion yuan (US$250 billion), under a plan drawn up by the Ministry of Communications.

The expressway network plan, accounting for regional, urban and rural development and population distribution, shows the government will spend 390 billion yuan in eastern China, 520 billion yuan in central areas, and 1.09 trillion yuan in western China.

The plan shows the total length of the network will reach 42,000 kilometers by the end of 2007, and 50,000 to 55,000 kilometers by 2010.

According to this report, China will invest 900 billion RMB (US$ 119 billion)in the transport sector this year alone. (Source.)

China's fixed-assets investments in the transport sector are scheduled to reach 938.4 billion yuan (119 billion U.S. dollars) this year, a growth of 18.4 percent year-on-year.

The transport sector invested 612.4 billion yuan (78 billion U.S. dollars) in fixed assets in the first three quarters of this year, up 25.96 percent over a year earlier.

Of the total, 124.2 billion yuan (16 billion U.S. dollars ) went to railway construction and upgrading, up 100 percent, 418.3 billion yuan (53 billion U.S. dollars) went to highway projects, up 12.7 percent, and 43.9 billion yuan to coastal harbor construction, up 37.4 percent.

Comparing China With India by Numbers

1. The Geo-demographics of China and India
Land Area: China 9.6 million sq km; India: 2.97 million sq km
Population: China 1.3 billion; India 1.1 billion
Labor force: China 791.4 million; India 496.4 million
Population growth rate: China 0.59% (death rate 0.697%, birth rate 1.325%); India 1.38% (death rate 0.818%, birth rate 2.201%)

2. Economy in General
GDP in 2005: China US$2.225 trillion; India US$719.8 billion or
China US$8.859 trillion; India US$3.611 trillion by PPP
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/in.html

Economy sectors:
China: Agriculture: 15% of GDP, Industry 52% of GDP, Manufacturing 35% of GDP, service 33% In 2001
India: Agriculture: 24% of GDP, Industry 27% of GDP, Manufacturing 16% of GDP, service 48% In 2001
These data comes from World Bank. You can conclude that China's industry size is almost 6 times of India's after a very simple calculation. You can see how little India's industry is. More important, China’s industry is still growing much faster than India’s.

3. Agriculture
India has more arable land than China. Indian produced 250 million tons of grains in 2003 (Thanks for the good weather).
China usually produces 450 million tons of grains each year no matter how tough the weather is (record is more than 500 million tons) (Thanks for the biotech R&D and expansion of the technologies in agricultural filed in China).

India produces 87.6 million tons rice from 42.4 million hectares on the other hand China produces 178 million tons of rice from a mere 29 million hectares. There is only one big difference; China embraced ‘hybrid rice’ technology in a big way, while India has had a slow start.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/15440.html

In 1980, China grew 4100 kg of rice per hectare; India, 2000. In 2005, China grew 6300 kg, India 3000 kg. The difference in yields had increased from 2100 kg to 3300 kg per hectare. For wheat the comparable figures were 1900 kg versus 1400 kg in 1980; and 4200 kg versus 2700 kg in 2005. For seed cotton, 1700 kg versus 500 kg in 1980; and 3200 kg versus 800 kg in 2005. For vegetables, 14500 kg versus 8300 kg in 1980; and 19300 kg versus 11300 kg in 2005.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/16111._.html

4. Industry
As data in “Economy in General” section shows, China’s industry scale is 6 times of India’s. China’s industry is still growing at around 16% pace for many years. That means one year increase in China’s industry revenue equals to the total size of India’s industry. The gap is huge.
China’s industry revenue is about 3.5 times of the revenue from agriculture, but for India, its industry revenue is almost equal to the agriculture.
Around 43 million tons of iron and steel was produced in India in 2005 (An important index of infrastructure construction.) China produced around 349 million tons of iron and steel.
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/12/eng20061012_310940.html

55% of the world cement (Another infrastructure construction index) was used in China. See http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2446908

By the data from CIA fact books, India produced around 36 million tons of oil (A natural resource index) in 2003 and will face the resource problem soon.
China produced 160 million tons of oil in 2003 and imported more than 100 million tons in the same year.

Here talks about the Sino-India trade in 2004. It clearly tells that India is only a raw material supplier to China and China mainly sells industrial products to India.
http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/full_story.php?content_id=81415

India’s average tariff fell from 56% in 1990 to 28% in 2004. By comparison, China’s average tariff dropped from 32% to 6% over the same period. That means, India has to use tariff to protect its weak industry. While, China’s industry competes against others fairly even in domestic market.
In 2002 the typical monthly wage of a manufacturing worker in India was US$23.80 while in China the figure was US$110.80, according to the IMF.
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/cda/doc/content/US_ChinaIndiaReality_Research.pdf
Even India’s industry is under the protection of high tariff. India still has a huge trade deficit. The deficit could reach US$50 billion in the fiscal year of 2005-2006.
http://www.boloji.com/analysis2/0109.htm
But China always has a trade surplus. I even don’t bother to provide the links.

5. Service Industry
Calculating from the GDP numbers of both China and India and the percentage of service industry in them, China’s service industry contributed US$742.5 billion to China’s GDP, it is almost the total of India’s GDP. India’s service revenue was only US$345.5billion.

Chinese airlines carried 138 million passengers in 2005, and the loads will nearly double to 270 million passengers in 5 years.
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2006-10-02-china-airports-usat_x.htm
Passenger traffic grew to 52.12 million in the last fiscal in India, from 43.47 million in 2004-05, to register a growth of 19.9 percent.
http://investinginindianews.blogspot.com/2006/07/indian-aviation-soaring-into-greater.html

The annual insurance premium currently collected in India is $23 billion, which is expected to increase ten fold to $ 239 by 2020. In the same period, China’s insurance premium will rise to $863 billion from the present level of $60 billion.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1821048,00020008.htm

Retail sales surged 12.9 percent in 2005 over the year before, to 6.7 trillion Yuan ($847 billion). By 2020, industry forecasts say the market could expand to about $2.4 trillion.
http://www.forbes.com/business/energy/feeds/ap/2006/10/17/ap3096453.html

India’s total retail market reached US $230 billion in 2005 and will grow to US$370 billion in 2011
http://sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=27553&hilite=
http://www.etretailbiz.com/feb06/SPECIALfeature.htm

India’s travel and tourism market was valued at US$42 billion in 2005. 340 million people traveled in 2005. The outbound travelers from India grew to 6.2 million in 2005. This was almost twice the number of arrivals witnessed by the country. That means only 3.1 million visited India in the same time.
http://www.euromonitor.com/Travel_and_Tourism_in_India
China received 47.11 million visitors in 2005. This number should not include the vistors from Hongkong, Macau and Taiwan.
http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v3/news.php?id=199299
There were 31 million outbound tourists from China in 2005.
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/world/asia/17travel.html
In 2005, inbound tourists reached 120 million (including Chinese from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan economies).
Overseas tourists contributed over $29.3 billion to the Chinese economy. But their contribution was far outweighed by that of domestic Chinese tourists, who contributed $66.7 billion.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HC07Cb06.html

In 2004, China’s service exports were US$62 billion versus US$40 billion for India. On the other hand, 60% of China’s service exports were travel and transportation services while in India the figure was 22%.
In 2003, India’s exports of commercial services other than travel, transportation, and finance amounted to US$18.9
billion. The figure for China was US$20.6 billion. In other words, China may already be ahead of India in selling IT
services to the world.
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/cda/doc/content/US_ChinaIndiaReality_Research.pdf

6. Financial Industry and financial stability
Indians always say that their financial industry is better than China’s. This claim can cheat a lot when Chinese banks were completely state-owned. But today, three of the top four Chinese banks were listed in Hong Kong stock market. When it goes to the truth in market, Indian financial industry looks so pitiful comparing with China’s.
After the IPO of The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, its market value is about US$87 billion, This is almost one and half times of the collective market capitalization of all listed Indian banks - for the 37 listed Indian banks, this is about $ 62.76 billion (Rs 2,86,859 crore). Bank of China's market capitalization is now around $105 billion and that of China Construction Bank $ 99 billion.
India’s ICICI Bank tops the market capitalization chart with $ 13.59 billion (Rs 62,177 crore), followed by the State Bank of India with $11.89 billion (Rs 54,380 crore) and HDFC Bank with $6.29 billion (Rs 28,774 crore). None of the other listed Indian banks has over $5 billion worth of market capitalisation. Punjab National Bank, the fourth bank when it comes to market capitalization, is worth just $3.62 billion. Canara Bank is worth just $2.52 billion.
China’s ICBC has total assets of over $ 812 billion, close to the size of India's GDP! State Bank of India, which accounts for almost one-fifth of total banking assets in India, however, has an asset base of only $84 billion.
http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/oct/07bank.htm

How China’s banks are welcomed in the stock market? The institutional tranche, which makes up 95% of the ICBC offering, attracted more than US$300 billion in orders and is 23 times oversubscribed. In Hong Kong, ICBC's initial public offering (IPO) of H-shares was 76-times oversubscribed with one million retail investors putting in HK$420 billion. This broke the previous record, held by Bank of China, which attracted HK$286 billion (US$36.7 billion) earlier this year. This enables ICBC to price its shares at the upper limit.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HJ21Cb03.html
After IPO, ICBC's market capitalization jumped to $156.5 billion, trailing the $165.6 billion of the world's fourth-biggest bank, JP Morgan Chase & Co in the world.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=afBgyU3agIzY&refer=home

Budget deficit: 10% of GDP in India versus 2% in China. This could have big impact on financial and economical stability.
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/cda/doc/content/US_ChinaIndiaReality_Research.pdf

China has almost US$1 trillion forex reserves with total of US$ 297.9 billion external debt
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/09/content_5180188.htm
http://www.cctv.com/program/bizchina/20061023/102290.shtml
India has US$165.275 billion forex reserves with US$132.1 billion external debt.
http://www.hindu.com/2006/09/30/stories/2006093001431800.htm
http://www.financialexpress.com/latest_full_story.php?content_id=143426

India has a huge public debt, the ratio of public debt to GDP was 82% in 2005 and still growing fast, which is above the globally recognized alarm level of 60 percent.
http://www.indexmundi.com/india/public_debt.html
China’s public debt was 28.8% of GDP.
http://www.indexmundi.com/china/public_debt.html

7. Software Industry
India is famous for its software and back office service. China's software industry is actually much bigger than that of India even China keeps silent. Chinese companies rely on huge domestic market while India has almost no IT market comparing with the big countries around. China has its own software brands such as KingSoft, Rising(anti-virus), Jiangming (Anti-virus), RedFlag(Working on Linux), WPS ( office software), ufsoft(Enterprise), KINGDEE (Golden Butterfly in Chinese) ( Enterprise), Shanda (Games).
China’s Software industry revenue reached 390 billion RMB (around US$50 billion) in 2005.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200603/17/eng20060317_251505.html
India’s software industry revenue reached US$29.6 billion in the fiscal year ended in March 2006.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=11050

8. Infrastructure
India has total of 127 million cellular users as of the end of September 2006 and around 50 million landline phone users. See
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/10/business/AS_FIN_India_Mobile_Phones.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_India
China has total of 437 million mobile users and 368 million fixed-line phone users as of the end of August 2006. Total of 800 million phones are being used in China.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200609/21/eng20060921_304974.html

India had 27.7 million internet users by year-end 2005, and had only 1.3 million broadband users. China had 111 million internet users through the end 2005, among which 41.2 million were broadband users. See:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004144
Don’t forget India defines access speed of 128 kbps as broadband even in 2004.
http://www.dot.gov.in/ntp/broadbandpolicy2004.htm

Railroad: In 1949, there were only 21,800 km of railway lines in China, with only 11,000 km opened to traffic. See: http://www.macrochina.com.cn/english/china/resources/20010412000136.shtml
As of the end of 2004, China had 74, 000KM of railroad with much better quality. See: http://english.people.com.cn/200501/26/eng20050126_171976.html
India had total of about 55,000 km Railroad in 1951. That’s much more than China had in 1952. See: http://irfca.org/faq/faq-history4.html .But India has fewer railroads than China now.

China's expressway (at least 4 lanes, speed limit 110KM/hour or 120KM/hour) reaches 42, 000KM at the end of 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressways_of_China
India has only 4,885 km are central-separated expressways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressways_of_India
In 2002 China spent US$128 billion on power and transport infrastructure compared to US$18 billion for India.
A very small share of India’s roads is composed of highways. Of 3.3 million kilometers of roadway, only 195,000 kilometers are highways. China, on the other hand, has roughly 1.4 million kilometers of highway.
Due to insufficient port capacity, the lead time for Indian exports to the US is roughly three to four times greater than Chinese exports.
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/cda/doc/content/US_ChinaIndiaReality_Research.pdf

Indian industry has to pay double of what Chinese factories pay for power; for ferrying freight by railways, Indian industry pays three times what Chinese factories pay.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/16111._.html

India has electricity capacity of 130,000 megawatts.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/13/business/power.php
At the end of 2006. China will have the power capacity of 590 million kilowatts (590,000 megawatts)
http://english.people.com.cn/200601/03/eng20060103_232522.html
India's power sector, infamous for its distribution sector inefficiencies, shares the top slot in the company of countries such as Nigeria and Nicaragua when it comes to overall transmission and distribution (T&D) loss levels.India's average loss in transmission and distribution (T&D) is about 33 per cent, The T&D lose in China is only 7%.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/12/03/stories/2005120303300900.htm

9. Education
Around 30% of Indian male cannot read newspaper and 52% of female cannot read. that means around 40% of Indians cannot read. See
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/in.html
Less than 10% of Chinese cannot read (most of are old person and they missed the education opportunity in the old time). See
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html

Indians are very proud of their software industry. But for the computer science education, China's education quality is much higher than India.

Here is the final list of the famous worldwide IBM ACM contest in 2006. So many Chinese universities were in the top list. You can clearly see Chinese students had much better performance than Indian counterpart.
http://icpc.baylor.edu/past/icpc2006/Finals/Standings.html
Here is another world-wide programmer contest. China and Chinese universities got much better scores than India.
http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=country_avg_rating (Ranking by country)
http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=school_avg_rating (ranking by school)
Here is the final list of Google Code Jam 2006, in which, there are 14 Chinese programmers entered the final competition, but you cannot find any Indians in the list.
http://www.google.com/press/annc/codejam06finals.html

Roughly 15% of China’s population aged 18 to 23 is enrolled in higher education compared to 7% in India. 91% of Chinese adults are literate versus 61% in India. Among females, the numbers are 87% and 45% respectively. In China, there are 18 pupils per teacher in secondary schoolsversus 34 in India. Clearly, China has an advantage when it comes to education.
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/cda/doc/content/US_ChinaIndiaReality_Research.pdf

China’s education also more connected with outside.
South and West Asia is the origin of 194,000 mobile students, with two-thirds coming from India, according to a report from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) titled 'The Global Education Digest 2006'. (That means about 130,000 students from India)
Between 1999 and 2004, the number of mobile students worldwide surged by 41 percent from 1.75 million to 2.5 million, according to the Digest. China sends the greatest number of students abroad - 14 percent of the global total - primarily to the US, Japan and Britain. (That means 350,000 students from China)
http://www.indiaenews.com/business/20060604/10169.htm

140,000 international students came to China for studying in 2005. The number will be doubled in 2020.
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2006/Aug/177200.htm
About 8,000 foreign students are studying in India.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/12586.html


Today, on every parameter for basic education, China is far ahead of India. In 2000, only 47 per cent of all children managed to complete grade 5 of primary schooling in India, as opposed to 98 per cent of Chinese children. The pupil-teacher ratio for primary education in China is one teacher for every 20 students compared to one teacher for every 40 students in India. According to World Bank estimates, youth male illiteracy in India is 20 per cent. In China it's less than one per cent.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2006/08/10/stories/2006081005691000.htm
Gross enrollment ratio is estimated to be more or less the same in both countries — but the drop out rate in India is 21 per cent, in China it is 1 per cent.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/16111._.html

10. Science and technology R&D
China spent 245 billion Yuan (30.6 billion U.S. dollars) on scientific research and development (R&D) in 2005, a rise of 24.6 percent. The investment accounted for 1.34 percent of China's 2005 GDP. R&D funds coming from enterprises stood at 167.4 billion Yuan, making up 68.3 percent of the total investment.
http://english.people.com.cn/200609/14/eng20060914_302806.html
India's total domestic spending on R&D rose an estimated 9.7% to $4.9 billion, or 0.77% of GDP, in the fiscal year ended March 2005.
http://www.plunkettresearch.com/
Based on PPP value of the investment on R&D, China invested US$124.03 billion in 2005 and India did US$36.11 billion in the same year. The numbers will go to US$149.80 billion and US$41.81 billion in 2007.
China’s R&D investment was 12.7% of the total of the world, comparing with 32.7% of US, 12.7% of Japan and 3.7% of India in 2005 based on PPP.
57.6% of the R&D investment in China came from industry, 33.4% from government, 2.7 from abroad, 6.3% from others.
23% of the R&D investment in India came from industry, 74.7% from government, 23% from others.
http://www.battelle.org/news/06/2006report.pdf

Even China’s R&D is not high comparing with the developed countries, but it was 6 times of what India did. The huge investment gap can tell many things. The results are so obvious:
The number of papers that are being published by China and India in high-caliber journals - ones that are accessed by Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index, papers originating from China had was almost thrice those from India in 2005.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/12493.html
In 2005, Indians published only 4 articles in the prestigious Journal of American Chemical Society (JACS) versus just 22 for China, 8 versus 28 in the Physical Review of Letters (PRL) and 2 versus 13 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC).
While China's score on the Knowledge Index has risen from 3.03 in 1995 to 4.21 today, India's has fallen from 2.76 to 2.61 -- that is, India has slipped even relative to itself!
In terms of innovation, which includes the articles published in scientific journals, apart from the number of R&D personnel and the number of patents, India's score has improved from 3.51 to 3.72 -- China, however, has improved from 3.94 to 4.74, another instance of that country's stupendous progress.
http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2006/jul/17china.htm
On public expenditure on higher education, India lags way behind at $406 per student, just a fraction of countries like China (US $2,728), Brazil (US $3,986) and Malaysia (US $11,790)
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/12640.html

Many Indian and west media say India has advantage in innovation over China. Let’s compare the patents from the two countries. The number of Patent applications of a country pretty much stands for the creative and innovation of this country’s economy. In 2004, over 130,000 patent applications were received in China and China became the No. 4 in the world. India only had 17,466 applications in the same year. China filed 51 applications per million people, while India had only seven filings per million people. India was second to last
http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2006/oct/18forbes.htm
China made 2,452 international patent applications in 2005, a growth of 43.7 percent compared with the previous year. http://china.org.cn/english/2006/Feb/156849.htm
India filed 648 PCT applications in 2005, compared to 723 in 2004 and 764 in 2003. The trend is so obvious.
http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/05/stories/2006020502761300.htm

Indians are always boasting about their high technologies even supercomputer technologies. Let's compare the super computer because Indians are always claiming India is the second IT country in the world.
China's homemade supercomputer listed as No. 14. But the fastest one used in India is No. 105. It was made by IBM. India's homemade one is listed as No. 258. Legend (now Lenovo) built another more powerful one this year. It could be listed as No. 3 or No. 4. More powerful and more supercomputers were used in China than in India. See http://www.top500.org/list/2003/11/
China’s Lenovo is working on 1,000 TFLOPS supercomputer already, and it could be ready before 2010.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/07/28/HNlenovosupercomputer_1.html?CLUSTERING
The super computer will have domestic CPUs: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-03/03/content_4254337.htm

Thanks for the large market scale and the recent progress in the technology, China is able and trying to set the international or national technology standards, such as TD-SCDMA, EVD, WAPI, AVS, RFID.
TD-SCDMA was accepted worldwide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TD-SCDMA
FiberHome is the presenter of ITU-T X.85、X.86和X.87 international telecommunication standard: http://www.fhn.com.cn/fhneng/gyfh.asp?class=About_us
ZTE To Edit Key ITU Standard For Optical Network Technology. http://www.totaltele.com/View.aspx?ID=1226&t=1
China also has its own HDTV, IPTV standards. We know the standard can make more and easier money than the simple production and present the development level of technology in one country. I never hear any international industrial standard come from India.
AVS: http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2005/12/07/afx2376962.html
WAPI: http://english.people.com.cn/200610/13/eng20061013_311470.html

In the telecommunication technology, China is already one of the forerunners in the world.
Huawei along had registered over 8000 patents already. http://www.china.org.cn/english/BAT/142904.htm
Huawei’s global contract sales jumped up 40 pct to US$8.2 billion. http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2006/01/15/afx2451344.html
Huawei became the largest supplier in the Optical networking market in the world in 2006.
http://telephonyonline.com/finance/news/huawei_alcatel_optical_090606/

China's IC industry is making great leap in recent years. China uses about 13% of the ICs in the world and will be one of the top IC producers in 2010.
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/2238/2006-1-28/138@296061.htm

China is to complete its first very-high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (VHTR) by the year 2010. This will be the first such reactor in the world.
http://en.chinabroadcast.cn/2238/2006-2-2/135@296739.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11080908/site/newsweek/
China’s fusion research and achievements,
http://www.hindu.com/2006/09/29/stories/2006092901421800.htm

China today is actually one of the leaders in nano-technology research. 18.3 percent academic publications on nanoscale science and engineering topics were from China in 2004. http://www.smalltimes.com/Articles/Article_Display.cfm?ARTICLE_ID=270358&p=109
China's nanotechnology patent applications rank third in world even before 2003.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-10/03/content_269182.htm

In agriculture, China is the place where hybrid-rice came from. Yuan Longping is called the “father of hybrid rice” in the world. http://www.china.org.cn/english/2001/Mar/8452.htm
China developed high-yield "super maize": http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?fuseaction=search&search=China&doc_id=9797&start=16&fullsearch=0China aims for 30 pc increase in "super wheat" output by 2020.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/015200610061211.htm
China has taken the lead among developing countries in the research of genetically modified (GM) plants.
http://english.people.com.cn/200512/05/eng20051205_225772.html

11: International Trade
China’s international trade topped US$1.4 trillion (import: US$660 billion, export: US$762 billion) in 2005, and China became the 3rd largest trader in the world. See: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/11/business/yuan.php
India’s international trade reached US$240.8B (export: US$100.6B, import: US$140.2 billion, import > export) in 2005 (ended in March 2006) with huge trade deficit (40% of its export). http://www.sunmediaonline.com/indiachronicleapril/bilateraltrade.html
From the data above, China does not only can sell a lot more to the outside and also provide a much larger domestic market to the outside. China’s market is not only huge on paper or by mouth. It is real.

12: Living standard
Infant mortality rate: China 2.312%, India 5.463%
Life expectancy at birth: China 72.58 years, India 64.71 years
(From CIA facts books)
People living with HIV/AIDS: China 0.64 million, India 5.7 million (The world No. 1 in 2005)
http://www.unaids.org/en/HIV_data/2006GlobalReport/default.asp

46% of general population in Bombay carries an active sexually transmitted disease (the greatest risk factor for HIV spread). Do you believe it? See: http://www.globalchange.com/indi.htm

Indian PC sales hit 4.6 million in 2005 (ended in March 2006) in the so-called the second IT superpower. See: http://www.boston.com/
About 20 million of PCs were sold in China in 2005 (ended in December 2005). China is actually the No. 2 PC market in the world, only after US. See: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2150574/china-pc-sales-hit-billion-2005

Only 32% of Indian families have TV. See:
China's number is 94% which is was almost as high as in the developed countries. India will be 2/3 of this number at the end of decade.

India’s health system is worse than neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh.
http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?autono=262521&leftnm=3&subLeft=0&chkFlg=
The proportion of children underweight in India is 47.5% higher than the proportion of children underweight in Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole.
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=143751
According to UNICEF, India in fact has 57 million children suffering from malnutrition compared to only seven million in China.
In China, underweight prevalence in children under five was reduced by more than half from 19 per cent in 1990 to just under seven per cent in 2005. The under-five mortality rate also sharply dropped from 49 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 31 in 2004.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2006/08/10/stories/2006081005691000.htm
India ranks 93 among 116 developing countries in the global hunger index. India’s score on the index for 2003, the latest year for which data is available, was 25.73, worse than Sudan at 27.20 but better than Burkina Faso (25.80). The index, comprising three indices - child malnutrition, child mortality and estimates of the proportion of people who are calorie deficient - ranks countries on a 100-point scale, with 0 being the best and 100 being the worst.
nearly 50 percent of the world’s hungry live in India. Around 35 percent of India’s population - 350 million - is considered food-insecure, consuming less than 80 percent of minimum energy requirements.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1058371

The long list of Chinese medal winners at Sydney 2000 Olympic Games: See: http://www.sportorganizer.com/2000sydney/2000sydney16.htm
Let's congratulate to the only one Indian winner in 2000: See: http://www.sportorganizer.com/2000sydney/2000sydney34.htm
2004 Olympics in Athens, Please look for China from the top of the list and India from the bottom:
http://www.athens2004.com/en/OlympicMedals/medals

13. Political system
Even Indians claim India is a democratic country. But its corruption is worse than China. see
http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=5299 (The research result for 2003, Corruption Perception Index)
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781359.html (The research result for 2006, Corruption Perception Index)
Another research report said India's corruption is much worse than China too: http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/topstories/story/0,4386,238369,00.html
Do you believe Democracy works in India?

Human Rights in India? See here: 3000 farmers committed suicide in a 11million farming area in one year. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3855517.stm
Suicide rate for women is as high as 148 per 100,000, and 58 per 100,000 for men in Tamil Nadu. http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/apr/15spec.htm
At least 5% of Mumbai's people live on the roads, and 2% are simply nomads. Another 2.5 million people live in dilapidated buildings which have been officially tagged as 'dangerous'. See the report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4222525.stm
Over 12 per cent of disabled women in Orissa have been raped and 25 per cent of those mentally challenged have been sexually assaulted in the state. Isn't that horrible? See: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=42099

Twelve protestors killed in police shooting in January, 2006
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/oris-j17.shtml
Four killed in protests in India's Gujarat state in May, 2006
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/southasia/article_1159863.php
Four were killed in the Violence over Indian star's death in April, 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4905880.stm

The ill-treated Indians have to take their weapons to stand up against Indian government
http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,1770612,00.html
http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/National/2006/06/02/1611463.html
Maoist rebels spread across rural India.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0822/p06s01-wosc.html

The religious conflicts, fighting happens in India over and over again. You can see how divided India is as a country.
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/12/06/ayodhya.background/

Don’t forget the caste system in India and 160 million Untouchables are living in India.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1868080.ece

In India, :At least 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have died in fighting between government forces and separatists since 1979."
http://www.localnewswatch.com/jordanfalls/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=40638

More than 50 were killed in India's Independence movement
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/06/ap/world/mainD8MFTQF03.shtml

It is well known that there is no space for the discrimination against other domestic ethnic groups In China. Women are enjoying the equal rights. Chinese minorities often have more rights or privileges than Han people.

To artificially make Kolkata "shining", gov "bought from farmers for 10,000 to Rs 12,000 per acre and sold to builders for Rs 300,000 to Rs 400,000 per acre ". This can happen in a large city in India.
http://specials.rediff.com/election/2006/apr/27sld2.htm
To make Mumbai as shining as Shanghai, so many slum residents losted their place to live in one day. Around 60% of Mumbai residents are living in slums.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-3-1487253,00.html
60% poor people cannot beat 40% rich people in making policies in a democracy country. If you read the comments after the news, few think about the poor. See the comments: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=40309
Also please see the pitiful poor India after their slums were destroyed by Indian government: http://news.bbc.co.uk/

These two articles were written by the same foreign visitor (sounds like a biz man) after he visited both India and China in the same year (2000).
His view about India: http://berclo.net/page00/00en-impressions-india.html
His impression about China: http://berclo.net/page00/00en-impressions-china.html
He also described so-called Indian democracy in this article: http://berclo.net/page00/00en-india-1.html
"India is said to be the world's largest democracy. There is no dispute about its size, one billion is large, but I don't think that a country whose major priorities in the last 50 years have favored a small minority at the expense of the majority can be called "a democracy". "

Socialism or capitalism both are economical models and both can push economy ahead.
Socialism is not associated with slow development in history. USSR was converted into a modern economy in a short time in its socialism era. Germany was also developing very fast before ww2 even the government controlled economy tightly.
China's economy growth was also around 7% every year before the reform even China’s more attention was put on national security. 7% growth can not be thought as slow development even today, let alone China was under embargo.
India's problem was not because of social system. It was largely because the government did not have strategy and had no ability to implement its policy if it has some. That's why India sometimes has good policies, such as education, health care...., but the results are poor.
Today, China's system has both flexibility in policy and ability to implement changes. This can allow us to keep the good policies and makes changes on bad decisions quickly. Good example is China’s education system. Our old education system worked very well at low cost. China's illiterate rate dropped to less than 15% even before the reform when China was much poorer. But we trusted market economy too much and we commercialized many parts of the system. After years, it is now proven a disaster and government got a lot of complains. Government input into the system decreased percentage-wise (not by absolute value). a lot of burden was shifted to families. As a country, the total investment into the education system increased a lot, but families’ burden increased a lot faster, especially for the poorer family.
Now we are making changes again. The totally free compulsory education will be provided before 2007 nationwide. China decided to make changes in 2005, but now many provinces implemented the new policy already. We are very confident that the new policy will be pushed to all the country in time.
China even CCP does not take care of any ideology any more. As long as we think some new policy is good for China, we can try it and then expanded all over the country quickly if the test proves it works.

In Asia, at least in East Asia, countries or economies can only get rich under the dictatorship not democracy. S Korea, Singapore, Taiwan area and Hong Kong, even Japan. There was no exception.
Japan was de facto one party government arranged by US until recent years the rival party could win. S Korea was completely a dictatorship with the support from US before 1990s. Taiwan did not have real election until 2000 (but it is real unfortunate for Chinese on the island. The election is proven to be disaster. Look at what is happening in Taiwan). Singapore is a dictatorship controlled by Lee family even today. There was no any election in Hong Kong until it was returned to China in 1997.
On the contrary, Philippines were some sort of rich. It was even considered as luck if a Taiwan people could find a job there in 1960s. Philippines has the democratic government that is almost a copy if US's. But now it is almost the poorest country in SE Asia. Taiwan’s fast development happened under the dictatorship. Its economy has been stagnant for almost 10 years since election happened on the island.
From both history and today’s truth, democracy does not translate into economical development as many people take for granted. You should understand why Goldman asked India government to following China’s political model.
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=142344

14. Economical History
Data show that China developed much faster than India even before China's reform. India was much better than China before the Chinese Communist Party took power. In 1950, India’s GDP per capita was almost 1.5 times of China’s. But China's GDP caught up India in 70s last century. Now China’s GDP per capita is almost 2.5 times of India’s
GDP Per capita ( I believe it is based on PPP)
Country...1820....1870....1913....1950....1973...1998…2003
China.......600......530......552......439......839....3,117…4392
India........533......533......673......619......853....1,746…2160
http://www.ggdc.net/Maddison/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_2006.xls

This is only the economical data. China was doing much better than India in social development before the reform, such as education, health service, scientific R&D, …. These laid down a very solid foundation for China’s economical reform that happened in late 1970s. Many people say India lags behind China because of its late economical reform. It is not true in fact. The truth is: China did better than India before the reform and is continuing to do better than India after the reform.

15. Some more links
India asks how its economy can catch up with China's
http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2003/11/19/rtr1154472.html
India Versus China-- Was written by some Indians
http://www.samachar.com/tech/archives/techtalk51.html
Can India Catch-Up With China? -- Was written by some Indians
http://www.indiadefence.com/ind-china.htm
The Population Bomb that can devastate India, actually it is a comparison between India and China
http://www.india-watch.com/4.htm
Can India catch up with China?
http://www.flonnet.com/fl1715/17150480.htm
Can India Overtake China? -- The famous article saying India will overtake China
http://www.alternatives.ca/article1053.html

16. Conclusion
The above links come from various resources. I collect these data to show the facts to people because I have heard too much from Indian high rank officials and Indian and western media that say: India is better than China, India has more potential than China, India is more innovative than China, India is better in quality and China is better in quantity… All of these claims are basing on no facts, at least today.

India’s economy is doing well in recent 3 or 4 years and the trend could continue for some time. I wish Indian people can enjoy their good life and make progress.

China has been high economical growth since 1949 even China had some setback during the Great Leap during 1959-1961 and the early stage of the Cultural Revolution during 1966-1970. The Cultural Revolution lasted for 10 years from 1966-1976, but China’s economy recovered and was in growth path after 1970.

In the past about 60 years, India’s economy was caught up by China and was put behind by China. Today, China’s economy is still growing at more than 10% pace, India, around 8%. These are simple facts.

Undoubtedly, China is a developing country with population of 1.3 billion. It has a lot of issues in the past, in today and in the future. I don’t deny that.