India possesses a competitive advantage over China when it comes to the quality of business managers, a media report says.“Though India entered its period of free-market reform only in the early 1990s — a full decade after China — it was never as closed to the world. India has long had a large private sector, a network of western-style business schools and a globe-trotting elite of English-speaking executives,” the article published in the upcoming issue of Newsweek says.According to the report, though China had a large number of firms, “it has too few experienced managers for even the elite firms”.Consulting firm McKinsey estimated that even the relatively small number of Chinese companies trying to expand abroad would need up to 75,000 internationally experienced leaders if they want to continue to grow over the next 10 to 15 years.India, the article says, now had 600 management programmes graduating 5,000 students a year. China had only 95 programmes, which were struggling to grant degrees.It also helped that Indian businesses, unlike Chinese ones, operated in a capitalist democracy for decades.Almost 50 per cent of India’s GDP was from its private sector, compared to 33 per cent in China. Indians have also faced the discipline of a stock market for much longer. The Shanghai Stock Exchange was shut down in 1941 and did not reopen until 1984. In contrast, the Bombay Stock Exchange, established in 1875, was the oldest in Asia.
