A new article on india and china. interesting to read

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_34/b3948401.htm

some excerpts

Even more exhilarating is the pace of innovation, as tech hubs like Bangalore spawn companies producing their own chip designs, software, and pharmaceuticals. “I find Bangalore to be one of the most exciting places in the world,” says Dan Scheinman, Cisco Systems Inc.’s senior vice-president for corporate development. “It is Silicon Valley in 1999.” Beyond Bangalore, Indian companies are showing a flair for producing high-quality goods and services at ridiculously low prices, from $50 air flights and crystal-clear 2 cents-a-minute cell-phone service to $2,200 cars and cardiac operations by top surgeons at a fraction of U.S. costs. Some analysts see the beginnings of hypercompetitive multinationals. “Once they learn to sell at Indian prices with world quality, they can compete anywhere,” predicts University of Michigan management guru C.K. Prahalad. Adds A. T. Kearney high-tech consultant John Ciacchella: “I don’t think U.S. companies realize India is building next-generation service companies.”

Barring cataclysm, within three decades India should have vaulted over Germany as the world’s third-biggest economy. By mid-century, China should have overtaken the U.S. as No. 1. By then, China and India could account for half of global output. Indeed, the troika of China, India, and the U.S. — the only industrialized nation with significant population growth — by most projections will dwarf every other economy.

China also is hugely wasteful. Its 9.5% growth rate in 2004 is less impressive when you consider that $850 billion — half of GDP — was plowed into already-glutted sectors like crude steel, vehicles, and office buildings. Its factories burn fuel five times less efficiently than in the West, and more than 20% of bank loans are bad. Two-thirds of China’s 13,000 listed companies don’t earn back their true cost of capital, estimates Beijing National Accounting Institute President Chen Xiaoyue. “We build the roads and industrial parks, but we sacrifice a lot,” Chen says.India, by contrast, has had to develop with scarcity. It gets scant foreign investment, and has no room to waste fuel and materials like China. India also has Western legal institutions, a modern stock market, and private banks and corporations. As a result, it is far more capital-efficient. A BusinessWeek analysis of Standard & Poor’s (MHP ) Compustat data on 346 top listed companies in both nations shows Indian corporations have achieved higher returns on equity and invested capital in the past five years in industries from autos to food products. The average Indian company posted a 16.7% return on capital in 2004, vs. 12.8% in China.

The burning question is whether India can replicate China’s mass manufacturing achievement. India’s info-tech services industry, successful as it is, employs fewer than 1 million people. But 200 million Indians subsist on $1 a day or less. Export manufacturing is one of India’s best hopes of generating millions of new jobs.India has sophisticated manufacturing knowhow. Tata Steel is among the world’s most-efficient producers. The country boasts several top precision auto parts companies, such as Bharat Forge Ltd. The world’s biggest supplier of chassis parts to major auto makers, it employs 1,200 engineers at its heavily automated Pune plant. India’s forte is small-batch production of high-value goods requiring lots of engineering, such as power generators for Cummins Inc. (CMI ) and core components for General Electric Co. (GE ) CAT scanners.