It will be fascinating to see to what extent India can replicate China’s economic success. And China, for its part, must cope with its loss of the demographic dividend: since 2012, its dependency ratio—the number of people of working age divided by the number of those who are too young or too old to work—has been rising (it is now just over 40 percent). The question is whether the country will become old before it can become truly rich. Both countries have enormous environmental problems and both will be challenged to feed their populations—but India has about 50 percent more farmland.
