The tiger in front.

The article presents an introduction to a series on economic and social conditions in China and India as of March 5, 2005. Comparisons between the two are inevitable. Both are poor, largely agricultural, countries that have made great strides in reducing poverty, especially since embarking on radical, liberalising economic reform. But India and China, always very different civilizations, have followed very different paths to growth. Under reform, they have converged somewhat in the past two decades, but will remain distinctive. That India is an open society and China is not is one of the most glaring differences between the two. Some people in both countries are tempted to use it to explain another: that China's economy has grown much faster. This survey will argue that this view is simplistic and misleading. The two countries have much else in common. Both have massive populations with correspondingly massive needs for resources, especially land, water and energy. Both face potentially destabilizing external disputes: China with America over Taiwan, India with Pakistan over Kashmir. Both, moreover, have each other: as model or as warning, and as so far largely unexploited economic opportunity.