Thursday 8 November 2007

Indians Vs Chinese

“China has a track record of attracting the FDIs when compared to India”

This is an old headline; the new ones would still worsen your patriotism. And this again was the reason for me to start putting my views on such ideologies.
I read in a blog where the someone professed about great Chinese Infrastructure and the developments and reforms going through in China, and India standing nowhere in comparison! Chinese FDIs getting forward and Chinese currency being sensible enough to be maintained unlike the “Indian Rupee-to Dollar-fall gaga” which happened couple of months back!
To begin with and to justify India being better than China, there are fundamental question Indians can ask themselves at their leisure, no matter where they are! At the very outset:
· Would you prefer staying in China just because its attracting FDIs ( Forieign Direct Investments)?
· How much of freedom to Press and Media is important to you?
· Is it none at all, like in China?
· Would you wish to voice against the government policies or be a Chinese all your life?
Well, I know what your answers to these questions are, as they would be similar to mine. However, if you try asking a Chinese, whether he wishes to have alternate political parties to choose from, apart from the one and only Communist party of China and that he would also get the veto to elect, what would be the answer?
These questions only support what I wish to justify! Do you really think the Chinese profits are the real Profits? Do you really think China is benefitting by rupee getting stronger against the dollar and hitting on India with the Exports? Let us consolidate these two questions to an answer.
The Chinese exports are cheaper, but that is again due to its cheap quality! Chinese goods have got a notorious brand tag of “cheap Chinese” everywhere they export. Tomorrow even if the Chinese invent something like a Duracell battery which would last longer and increase its Export price, would you in India prefer buying this? No, for sure! And why is this? It’s just because the Chinese has a brand associated with cheap quality goods for lower rates. Any of their electronic products boasting to be economically priced don’t give you even 5 % of the satisfaction Indian goods would fetch! Take the battery as an example. Any Indian manufactured battery would give you 10 times better life than the Chinese.
About the rupee getting stronger against Dollar, Indian exports will be hit only if we continue to manufacture cheap products which any country can manufacture. And that would not happen if we stay product-focused and innovative, unlike the Chinese who focus on how the cost cutting is achieved for exports putting the quality image of the product at stake!
China is no doubt attracting the FDI, but are you aware how low – profile this job is, that gets outsourced to China when compared to India? And, being an Indian I would definitely not want business out of low end jobs being off shored to India. Not at the cost of working late nights so that the Source Company earns more than what my company does! Not at the cost of being stressed and not being able to spend time with my family. Let the Chinese do it, to attract the FDIs. If we grow the Indian market and consumer base within India, why do we need any other market? India is a population of 1 billion!! This should act as our strong point. Our economy should not collapse if exports stop or reduce. We should make use of the fact that 1/6 of world lives in India and the exchange rate balance should not be a cause to crib! Like said earlier, to be a superpower, we need to have knowledge and technological advantage not low cost based cheap labor advantage! Again, let the Chinese do it like they did always! Like it is said, we need to create a situation where other countries line up to buy our F-16s, operating systems, mobile phones, I-pods, Boeing, our brand for that matter which would have market at our specified and patented rates, unlike the Chinese FM radio which these days, has no consumers even in India due to its unreliable functionality. India has Infosys products like Finnacle, and more coming up quicker when compared to what China is doing to get product based.
The Forex reserves in China is 1 trillion Plus, whereas that in India is 200 billion plus. If the Dollar weakens further, China would suffer 5 times greater loss than what India would! Already China has 800million Plus so called “poor” compared to India which has 350 million, and both the countries’ population being a billion plus. It is known that the rural Chinese cant migrate to the cities unlike the Indians from villages do! The infrastructure of china is again only limited to the Capital Beijing and Shanghai city. The rural china is no way even a percent nearer. In the future too, the people in China would never be able to afford foreign trips due to the artificially weakened Chinese currency by the Chinese government. However the Indians would definitely not have this problem in the long run as the Indian Rupee is controlled by the market trend.
I probably would not have written this article had I been a Chinese, and you probably would not be reading it, if you were Chinese too! India has the freedom of Information, where the Internet is not filtered. In China, the people would not have heard of this sort of liberty from their communist government and the stuff on the internet too, is decided by the government if it can be public! As anything being anti-Chinese/communist (like my article!) gets a bar!
Are we not a step ahead towards innovation, considering that we at least get to voice our opinions?