India, China, Europe: The Economic Race

INDIA, CHINA, EUROPE: THE ECONOMIC RACE

East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan) modernised in the second half of the 20th century. This story is the Bhagavad Gita for growth/development economics. But East Asia basically did a crash-implementation of the Western techno-economic model. And this Western techno-economic model developed in Europe over a period of 1000 years (starting from 1000 AD).

The graph shows the per capita income for India, China and Europe from the year 1 AD to 1800 AD. Data is from Angus Maddison's Contours Of The World Economy: 1-2030 AD. Till 1000 AD, all the 3 civilisations had the same per capita income. But after that, Europe's per capita income started shooting up. This was due to technological advances like wind-mills, water-wheels, horse-ploughs, etc.

So studying the 'East Asian model' is a good shortcut to understand growth/development economics. But to really understand the fundamentals of growth/development economics, we have to study the techno-economic history of Europe from 1000 AD onwards . . .