China and India, 2025

de Charles Wolf

China and India, the world's two most populous countries, will exercise increasing influence in international affairs in the coming decades, and each country's role on the world stage will be affected by the progress that it makes and by the competition and cooperation that develop between them. This monograph focuses on the progress China and India seem likely to achieve from 2010 through 2025 in four domains: demography, macroeconomics, science and technology, and defense spending and procurement. In each domain, the authors seek answers to these questions: Who is ahead? By how much? and Why? The authors find that India has distinct advantages over China in terms of demographics; that the two countries are surprisingly close in terms of forecasted economic growth, although China's overall economic output is likely to remain significantly higher than India's; and that, for both science and technology and defense spending and procurement, China's current substantial margins over India are likely to rise but by amounts that will vary widely depending on several alternative scenarios. The monograph concludes with implications for policy and for further research.