As China’s president Xi Jinping heads to India to meet prime minister Narendra Modi take a look at how the two nations, which each contain more than a sixth of the world’s population, compare

As China’s president Xi Jinping heads to India to meet prime minister Narendra Modi, it is tempting to hold the two countries up against each other. Each contains more than a sixth of the world’s population. Each has seen dramatic economic growth in recent decades yet each is still beset by widespread poverty. And each now has a strong leader at the helm.



But many argue the countries and their trajectories are too dissimilar for comparisons to be useful. The Indian journalist Pallavi Aiyar, who spent several years covering China, argued recently that the world’s largest democracy should be looking to Indonesia - not to its authoritarian neighbour. As the figures below show, the differences between the countries are more striking than the similarities.



China’s unemployment rate is higher than India’s, but some say underemployment also needs to be taken into account.

The militaries of each country number well over 1 million personnel. But China’s military budget dwarfs that of India - and it has vastly more nuclear warheads.



China has a strikingly high proportion of women workers; their labour force participation is more than twice that of their Indian peers.



While some think China’s literacy rate may be overstated, there is no doubt it has reached a remarkable level, especially given that people must learn characters rather than an alphabet. Over 96% of the population are literate - compared to just over 71% in India.

India’s population (1.25bn last year) is fast catching up with China’s (at 1.36bn) thanks to the latter’s “one child” policy, which has seen the fertility rate drop to 1.7. Many experts suggest the true rate is already far lower.



China would like more of a say in international institutions, pointing out that they have failed to reflect global economic and political changes. It enjoys more votes at the IMF than India - but still fewer than the UK, never mind the US.

The two countries enjoy some of the world’s best food, so it isn’t clear why residents would want to opt for a Big Mac. But should they do so, it comes far cheaper in India. As the Economist has argued the price of the McDonalds burger is a good proxy for how misaligned the value of the currency is in different nations.

China sees sport as a matter of national prestige and has poured time and resources into finding and training medal winners. Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that it claimed 88 medals at the 2012 Olympics in London, while India took just six. In fact, China’s London haul was over three times higher than the total number of medals India have got at all the Olympics they have been in.

Chinese internet users have identified corrupt officials simply by looking for their luxury watches. With an anti-corruption crackdown in full swing, conspicuous consumption is now out - but China’s Swiss watch imports have still dwarfed those of India this year.



China’s rubber-stamp legislature has a higher proportion of female politicians than India’s parliament, albeit still not that many. But India’s are democratically elected, and they have real say. While India has had a female leader, no woman has even reached the Politburo Standing Committee.





China is notorious for its lack of press freedom. But Reporters Without Borders suggests that India has plenty of problems too.

There is quite a vast difference between the overall health levels across the two nations. A baby born in China can expect to live for nine years longer than one born in India.

And the differences in the level of mortality at an early age is even more severe. The proportion of children that died within 28 days of birth was three times higher in India than it was in China.