Make way for India and China, says BusinessWeek

But the challenge, according to this in-depth and futuristic survey, is clear: “The US and other established powers will have to learn to make room for China and India.”

“Rarely has the ascent of two still relatively-poor nations been watched with such a mixture of awe, opportunism and trepidation,” it is argued in the survey. ‘‘The post-war era witnessed economic miracles in Japan and South Korea. But neither was populous enough to power worldwide growth or change the game in a complete spectrum of industries.’’

China and India, by contrast, possess the weight and dynamism to transform the 21st-century global economy, the survey goes on to add. ‘‘The closest parallel to their emergence is the saga of 19th-century America, a huge continental economy with a young, driven workforce that grabbed the lead in agriculture, apparel, and the high technologies of the era.’’

The enormous potential of both countries, says the cover story, cannot be simply anchored in a large pool of cheap labour. In India and China together, half a million engineers and scientists enter the job market each year — compared to just 60,000 in the US.

Not only do they provide cost-cutting offshore alternatives for western businesses, they also offer skills that surpass those of American counterparts.

Another advantage both share is a growing consumer class — especially China, which for instance has the world’s largest base of cellphone subscribers.

But the primary challenge posed by these forecasts, says Businessweek, lies with India and China themselves. They must first meet the potential sighted.

China has to prove that it can go beyond “forced-march industrialisation” and show more innovation — 57 per cent of exports, for instance, are from foreign-invested companies. It also, in comparison with India, faces the prospect of meeting the retirement benefits of a greying population as its working-age population begins to shrink a decade or so from now.

India’s fertility rates push such considerations way into the future. But in contrast to the 1 million employed in the infotech industry, says the cover story, 200 million Indians have to get by on $1 a day or less.

Export manufacturing is a way of generating millions of jobs. For that, however, India has to beat “bureaucratic red tape, rigid labour laws and its inability to build infrastructure fast enough” to create an enabling environment.