AHC: Reverse the Economic Situations of China and India

With a POD after 1945, create a scenario where China and India reverse economic situations with an Indian "economic miracle" starting in the 1970s with India as the world's second largest economy and the "superpower of tomorrow" while China is relatively poor but catching up to India with rapid growth going on in China.
 
For China to be in that situation you either need the Civil War to continue on past 1949, or for The Gang of Four to seize power and keep The Cultural Revolution going into the 1980’s. Eventually they’d be toppled and a reformist government would take power.

I don’t know enough about India to say for sure but I suspect it may require pre WW2 POD’s.
 

Toraach

Banned
For India it is very simple to find a possibility of POD, I mean Nehru and his daughter weren't socialist who believe in regulations, beaurocracy, and other things which later created the "License Raj" and "Hindi model of growth"(the last term is purely untrue in my opinnion, because a sluggish economic development in India during the License Raj was a result of economic/regulation/institutional environment, not some "genetic" traits of indian culture). So free market, no regulations, and seeking inspiration not in the Soviet Union, but in Japan and later in other "tigers". For China a POD for a bad condition is also a simple one, Deng didn't get power, and some hardline maoists remained in charge. With a some particular bad luck China might have even evolved into a bigger North Korea.
 
For China to be in that situation you either need the Civil War to continue on past 1949, or for The Gang of Four to seize power and keep The Cultural Revolution going into the 1980’s. Eventually they’d be toppled and a reformist government would take power.
IMHO, a Hua Guofang-ruled PRC would be a good POD for such a circumstance as the Gang of Four would be too destructive.
 
For China a POD for a bad condition is also a simple one, Deng didn't get power, and some hardline maoists remained in charge. With a some particular bad luck China might have even evolved into a bigger North Korea.
I was thinking more "China reforms later" than "China turns into Mega-NK".
 

Toraach

Banned
IMHO, a Hua Guofang-ruled PRC would be a good POD for such a circumstance as the Gang of Four would be too destructive.
So Hua Guofang is a good choice for your initial question, and the Gang of Four is even a possibility for "northkoreanization" of China, but I think that a soviet like stagnation is more likely to happen in that ATL.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
A China with North Korean priorities could be pretty scary though.

It could be routinely invading in Taiwan and the South China Sea to be enforcing its maritime claims, and have thousands of nuclear weapons.

It also probably would have been willing to sell more of its hardware to other powers without regard for the consequences.
 
Well, I was thinking of China being closer to OTL India economically, not being a "mega-NK" when I came up with this scenario.
 
It could just be a phase then.
True, but a Hua Guofang-ruled PRC would be a better way to get a delayed Chinese economic miracle in the same time frame as India's IOTL as the Gang of Four would have destroyed any chance of such a miracle with their radical policies with the possibility of a civil war. Also, what about how to get a China-esque "economic miracle" in India, then?
 
True, but a Hua Guofang-ruled PRC would be a better way to get a delayed Chinese economic miracle in the same time frame as India's IOTL as the Gang of Four would have destroyed any chance of such a miracle with their radical policies with the possibility of a civil war. Also, what about how to get a China-esque "economic miracle" in India, then?

Have her economy during the Cold War period get retarded by getting more closely yolked to the Soviet Union's, perhaps? Avoid a Sino-Soviet split, sign some bad trade treaties early on, buckle down hard on the "peasent culture" movement, ect.; with the surplus getting fed into the Soviet industrial machine to create a close "Communist Economy", and China's potential could be lain dorment until the breakdown of the Soviet system. At that point, they're forced to start industrializing and implimenting market reforms as their economy has no higher-level processing base to produce "Value added" goods that Moscow once provided, with western methoids getting the advantage of expanding into a vacum of lower regulation because China, not having industry, never needed to have government corporations which they'd try to prop up/auction out to local oligarchs?
 

samcster94

Banned
For India it is very simple to find a possibility of POD, I mean Nehru and his daughter weren't socialist who believe in regulations, beaurocracy, and other things which later created the "License Raj" and "Hindi model of growth"(the last term is purely untrue in my opinnion, because a sluggish economic development in India during the License Raj was a result of economic/regulation/institutional environment, not some "genetic" traits of indian culture). So free market, no regulations, and seeking inspiration not in the Soviet Union, but in Japan and later in other "tigers". For China a POD for a bad condition is also a simple one, Deng didn't get power, and some hardline maoists remained in charge. With a some particular bad luck China might have even evolved into a bigger North Korea.
China as a giant North Korea, that is just chilling to think about.
 

samcster94

Banned
Well, this is a challenge to reverse the situations economically of India and China, not to turn China into mega-NK.
China being run by the KMT instead, and ending up with a corrupt barely democratic regime might do it. India aligns itself less with the Russians and opens itself up to trade more(while Pakistan has better luck being stable).
 
China being run by the KMT instead, and ending up with a corrupt barely democratic regime might do it.
Or a PRC where Zhou Enlai or Liu Shaoqi instead of Mao Zedong was the "Great Helmsman". Without the mess which was the Great Leap Backward or the madness of the Cultural Revolution, it would probably take longer for the Party to realize that there was no money to be made in Zhouism or Liuism than Maoism IOTL.
India aligns itself less with the Russians and opens itself up to trade more(while Pakistan has better luck being stable).
Maybe avoid partition instead?
 

samcster94

Banned
Or a PRC where Zhou Enlai or Liu Shaoqi instead of Mao Zedong was the "Great Helmsman". Without the mess which was the Great Leap Backward or the madness of the Cultural Revolution, it would probably take longer for the Party to realize that there was no money to be made in Zhouism or Liuism than Maoism IOTL.?

Maybe avoid partition instead?
That might need a pre WWII POD(like Jinnah be on board with a unified India).
A different PRC might be interesting(have Mao die in WWII in a Japanese attack), especially if it is more "moderate"(like Lenin's USSR compared to Stalin's).
 
China: Gang of four sieze power and keep going, resulting in China opening up in the late 80s

India: Partition does not happen and India is not controlled by Nehru's socialist ideals due to having a close border with USSR , this leading to closer relations to USA
 
A China with North Korean priorities could be pretty scary though.

It could be routinely invading in Taiwan and the South China Sea to be enforcing its maritime claims, and have thousands of nuclear weapons.

It also probably would have been willing to sell more of its hardware to other powers without regard for the consequences.

If China became a mega North Korea and routinely tried to invade China and put the South China Sea at risk, and used nuclear blackmail on the regular on its neighbors, it would be doing the same thing on the Soviet-Chinese borders as well, with Zhenbao Island and whatnot.

Considering the huge population of China and the absolutely massive armies it could send across the border, the Soviets might as well dust off its plans for nuking China in 1969 and just carry the plans out before the Chinese get too many nukes or develop longer-ranged missiles that could threaten major cities of the USSR.
 
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