India
- India is the world’s largest democracy
- India’s landmass is about a third of the size of the US
- It has a population of 1.1 billion people
- It has 18 official languages and about 300 dialects. Although English is widely spoken, it is not an official language.
- India’s GDP growth has averaged 8.1 per cent over the past three years
- India’s IT and IT services industry contributed 4.1 per cent of GDP in 2005
- Agriculture accounts for 23 per cent of the nation’s GDP
- Despite having the world’s second-largest rail network, India’s infrastructure has very few motorways. It has 195,000km of motorway to China’s 1.4 million kilometres
- India accounts for only 1.3 per cent of world exports of goods and services
- A quarter of the population lives below the poverty line
- Over the next five years, 71 million young people will join India’s workforce
- The IT and IT services industries only employ 0.25 percent of the entire workforce of India.
- India has three times as many engineering and science graduates as the US
- India’s budget deficit is approximately nine per cent
- Three-quarters of India’s school children leave before the eighth grade
- More than half of India’s women and 30 per cent of its men are illiterate
- Indian IT services firm, Infosys, is investing $65m (£34m) in business development centres in southern China
China
- China accounts for one fifth of the world’s population – 1.3 billion people
- Credit banking and paper money are Chinese inventions
- China’s economic boom started 27 years ago when it began to dismantle its centrally planned economy, mainly the agricultural sector where collective farming was scrapped
- China’s economy received another fillip after it joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001. Since then, imports have more than doubled. It is now the world’s third-largest importer
- Last year, China became the world’s second-largest consumer of oil after the US
- Although China is the world’s fourth-richest economy, it has a per capita GDP of only $17,000 (£9,000), whereas in OECD countries the average level of income is closer to $30,000 (£16,000).
- The number of universities in China increased from 1,075 in 1990 to 1,731 in 2004
- Approximately 15 per cent of China’s population aged 18 to 23 is enrolled in higher education
- All Chinese children have to study English after the age of five
- There is massive migration in eastern China from poverty-stricken rural areas to the new booming cities
- China is the world’s largest market for mobile phones, semiconductors and online games
- It is the second largest market for PCs
- China has the second largest community of internet users
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