Learning From Economic Experiments in China and India

China and India offer contrasting models of recent economic development. I focus on two dimensions of this Sino-Indian difference-having to do with the state and with civil society-that have become contextually salient as a result of the current world financial crisis but have received short shrift in the management literature. China exhibits a strong state, forcing organizations to coexist with it, blurring the lines between the public and the private. The ambient rise in crisis-induced state ownership will likely force Such coexistence on organizations worldwide, so there is an opportunity to learn from the Chinese. India exhibits a raucous civil society, historically in angst against excesses of capitalism in a way that now appears relevant to the rest of the world. On both fronts, state and civil society, China and India are mirror inversions of each other. Each can be understood better when juxtaposed against the other. As management scholars, we would be well advised to learn from such economic experiments unfolding worldwide.