Just a copy and paste of a comment I wrote on his blog.... ---start comment--- This is funny, I just wrote about the Chinese middle class a couple of days ago:

Just a copy and paste of a comment I wrote on his blog.... ---start comment--- This is funny, I just wrote about the Chinese middle class a couple of days ago: http://www.pakg1.net/2010/10/changing-chinese-mindset-towards.html http://www.pakg1.net/2010/10/changing-chinese-mindset-toward... I think your points were correct maybe 3 years ago. I don't think they are now. China still has a lot of issues that could cause it to stumble, but I don't think a lack of a middle class is one of them. As well, I cannot think of more Indian executives than I can Chinese executives. In fact, I think Chinese executives by far have the lead, simply because HK and Taiwan are more westernized and advanced than maybe even India. The simple fact is that HK and Taiwan play nicer with China than a lot of people know, simply because the economics make it worthwhile. There may be a lot of political strife in the news, but there's a lot of money flowing behind the scenes. Finally, as an expat who's living in China right now, I can honestly say that not only does this middle class exist, their English is pretty darn good. And I'm finding that increasingly often, they have a 3rd language (in my case, I'm running into a ton of Japanese speakers). So in all, I think this view is a tad outdated. India probably has a bright future, but as anyone who attended the APCAC 2010 conference this year can attest (and even Indian panel speakers there attested to this), India is way behind in a number of areas, especially the infrastructure necessary to really rev its economy up. That investment is only now just starting due to the fact that their democratic government apparently has its first real majority government ever. And you may wish to fix this apparent contradiction when comparing the middle classes of the two countries.... "China has the population, the will, the educational system, the foreign currency reserves — everything to make it the next global superpower except two things: 1) an emerging middle class generation comparable to our Baby Boomers" "What I find interesting is that most people just take it as bible truth that China will be the next superpower because it is so number-oriented (huge infrastructure dollars, huge manufacturing dollars, higher per capital wealth than India, bigger middle class, etc…)." ---end comment---