ABSTRACT
This monograph originated as part of a broader academic project on China and the International Economy in 2004. This comparison of China and India now provides an exciting study relevant not only to the international economy but also to the geopolitical and strategic concerns of an accelerated globalization by China unleashing powerful economic challenges to corporate structures and economic institutions and law. Adam Smith’s classical enquiry into the wealth of nations has been reconfigured by Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. 1 This provokes one to provide local histories of Chinese and Indian capitalism to this debate, adding empirically rigorous narratives to this universal construction of economic growth, unconstrained by frontiers, law and established state institutions and cultures. The big question is how, after centuries of retardation, are China and now India emerging powerful and pulling ahead of Western, European economies? These Asian corporate economies are investigated through historical, empirical and theoretical data to understand economic progress on a global scale. This volume covers the states and the legal frameworks shaping corporations, commercial and financial institutions and property rights while highlighting the differences and similarities of the two Asian powers. There is no comparison attempted with Western Europe because I believe that Europe reveals largely contrasting factors, and hence this volume, though seeking global definitions for economic progress, will not be trapped by economic arguments of convergence or divergence. Economic history in the last four decades preached this mantra. Eric Jones, Angus Maddison and Deepak Lal – all renowned scholars – contributed to this School. 2 But I feel that the existing knowledge on European economies does not sustain nor contribute any theories of economic convergence in the study of Chinese or Indian corporate economy. I am dictated by the serious empirical data I have on China and the excellent secondary literature I have gathered on India besides my own research on Indian corporations and financiers for my book Capital and Entrepreneurship of South East Asia. 3
