Comparative study: China/India: The role of the state in the development - Essay Example

China today represents a new form of economic development and this country has witnessed sustained financial growth while resisting pressures to democratize and has continued to develop inline with Maoist socialist thought. Oftentimes, the economic model of development propagated by China today is described as “authoritarian capitalism” (Gat 2007, 33). China and India have recently taken steps towards the embrace of market-oriented principles. While capitalism and entrepreneurship remain relatively new concepts in China, these concepts are starting to take hold.

How has China developed over the past century? What is the recent history of China and how does this history explain the model of development which it has decided to pursue? Similarly, how has India developed over the past century? What is the recent history of India and how does this history explain the model of development which it has decided to pursue? What roles does the state play in the Chinese and Indian economies and lastly, how have these economies grown under globalization? These questions, and many more, will be addressed in this exploration of China and India and their embrace of capitalism, state-led development and entrepreneurship today.

We now turn to an introduction to the globalization phenomenon and the role of neoliberalism in the growth of globalization today. Globalization, as it exists today, rests largely on the shoulders of neoliberal economics and the global entrenchment of capitalism as the dominant economic system in the world. Neoliberalism, the belief in laissez-faire economics, was best articulated by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States in the 1980s. US President Ronald Regan famously remarked “government was not the solution but the problem” (Hobsbawm 1994, 133).

Neo-liberals put all of their faith in the distributive capabilities