The people's republic was established in 1949 without improving the standard of living much for the next three decades. Then Deng Xiaoping came along and abondoned organizing the whole sphere of the economy in favor of letting companies produce as much as they could sell. And the US right across the Pacific ocean happened to be very happy to buy cheap goods en masse. Without that foreign money pouring in, it would've been much harder to pay for all that poverty alleviation.
India, too, has had Five Year Plans, but they don't seem to have helped that much. If they could get foreigners to give them more money, though...
I think India is torn apart by its own racial and religious problems, not to mention the notorious caste system, but that's story for another chapter
In the very least, the Chinese gov, at Mao's time or at Deng's time tried to provide general welfare and equity to all of its citizens. Even though Mao's delusional thinking resulted from perhaps old age made that dream impossible and left the coutry iredemmable damaged til Deng.
India is much more diverse, including at a genetic level. The Han Chinese are one people, whereas Indians are clustered in hundreds of populations of around 3 million that have managed a higher level of endogamy than Ashkenazi Jews for over 3 millennia:
Source: chapter 6 of "Who We Are And How We Got Here" by David Reich.
“We welcome foreign investment and advanced techniques. Management is also a technique. Will they undermine our socialism? Not likely, because the socialist sector is the mainstay of our economy. Our socialist economic base is so huge that it can absorb tens and hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of foreign funds without being shaken. Foreign investment will doubtless serve as a major supplement in the building of socialism in our country. And as things stand now, that supplement is indispensable. Naturally, some problems will arise in the wake of foreign investment. But its negative impact will be far less significant than the positive use we can make of it to accelerate our development. It may entail a slight risk, but not much.” — Deng Xiaoping
Thank you for the nice quote. You seem to think it contradicts what I said, but I don't see it that way. The importance of foreign investment was exactly my point.
Maybe because I said that he "abondoned organizing the whole sphere of the economy"? But the economy is no longer 100% state-owned like it was in 1978, is it not? (I'm having trouble finding reliable figures, but I vaguely recall it being around 40% of GDP nowadays.) Of course GDP has grown 40x since then, so even just 40% of that represents 16x growth and Deng wasn't wrong about the socialist sector benefiting from foreign investment. It's just that the private sector grew even more.
India, too, has had Five Year Plans, but they don't seem to have helped that much. If they could get foreigners to give them more money, though...