>India currently punches below its weight on the world stage due to slow economic development: 30 years ago, its GDP per capita was similar to China’s, but is now 5x lower. However, if India were to enter a period of similarly high growth over the next 30 years as China has for the past 30, it would quickly become one of the most powerful countries in the world thanks to the scaling factor of its immense population.
And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.
Yeah, any comparison to China needs to acknowledge that China is largely ethnically homogenous and has an authoritarian government that has relatively consistent goals top-to-bottom. India is nothing like that and I don't see it becoming like that anytime soon.
This is a fiction that was created by Chinese nationalists [1] [2] [3] over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.
"Dialects" between provinces can be very different and mutually unintelligible verbally. In many other contexts they would have been considered different languages, but since the imperial bureaucracy and the Chinese writing system helped maintain a sense of unity in spite of it we don't.
All this isn't to say Han identity is any less real than any other identity. The idea of "ethnic identity" is fundamentally constructed and imaginary across the board. That's also why it's not a great explanatory factor for much of anything. These categories aren't primordial, they're usually reflective of the very thing for which you're trying to use it as an explanation.
Yeah, I'm aware of that, however, most Chinese still consider themselves Han Chinese. So even if it is somewhat of a fiction, most people within China consider it true, which is what is relevant for the purposes of having a national identity.
My point is, they consider it true because of the country's political cohesion. If the country wasn't politically cohesive, the ethnic identity wouldn't be either. The unified identity is explained by the political homogeneity as much as it explains it.
I think the causality works both ways. If you have an ethnic identity, it's easier to assimilate new arrivals, especially when you are numerically superior. This has been the history of China for a long time.
May I know how many years your grandmother was kept as a slave and abused ? Indian experienced it for 200+ years.
People (Americans dare I say ?) have no problems accepting blacks are behind whites on most development indices EVEN TODAY because of slavery and oppression, but somehow can't extend the same logic to former colonial countries like India.
Recent economic hardships of a particular class has threatened democracy and made a joke of fabled American institutions, despite high levels of education and wealth. But a country which was oppressed for centuries and is still reeling in poverty, for benefit of the Western world, now is in a position to help them with a little bit of help and you still can't extend a helping hand in good faith.
Maybe your grandmother would have been a bicycle if she had wheels, but you despite having a brain are a simpleton.
If you post like this, you're perpetuating a nationalistic flamewar, which is just as bad as starting it. If people simply flagged the firestarter it would fizzle out.
And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.