The Economic Health of BRICS – Part 5/7

January 15, 2012

It may be no secret that China’s economic health will have an impact on the rest of the BRICS countries in addition to America and Europe. India and China need the resources of Brazil, Russia and South Africa and those three countries prosper due to the business from India and China.

For a better understanding of the BRICS, I turned to Investopedia for a definition, which said, “The BRIC thesis posits that China and India will become the world’s dominant suppliers of manufactured goods and services, respectively, while Brazil and Russia will become similarly dominant as suppliers of raw materials.

“It is important to note that the Goldman Sachs thesis isn’t that these countries are a political alliance (like the European Union) or a formal trading association – but they have the potential to form a powerful economic bloc…”

Due to lower labor and production costs, many companies also see the BRICS as a source of foreign expansion opportunities.

In addition, what was once only an acronym has become something else.

Although the BRIC acronym came into existence in 2001 when there was no real political organization among the four original countries, on June 16, 2009, due to the 2008 global financial crises, the leaders of the four BRIC countries held their first summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and issued a joint declaration. Since then, they met in Brasilia in 2010 and again in Sanya, China in 2011.

In 2010, South Africa launched efforts to join the BRIC group, and the process of its formal admission began in August. Later in 2010, the BRIC countries expanded to include South Africa, becoming the BRICS.

The next meeting of the BRICS is scheduled in New Delhi, India, March 2012.

Continued on January 16, 2012 in The Economic Health of BRICS – Part 6 or Return to Part 4

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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The China-India Comparison with Lots of Facts – Part 4/5

January 3, 2012

POVERTY & THE MAOIST REVOLT – Foreign Policy magazine reports that rural poverty in India is turning a Communist Revolt in to a raging resource war. “For India this is no longer rural unrest, but a full-fledged guerrilla war.”

“Economic liberalization has not even nudged the lives of the country’s bottom 200 million people. India is now one of the most economically stratified societies on the planet… The number of people going hungry in India hasn’t budged in 20 years.…”

“New Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore now boast gleaming glass-and steel IT centers and huge engineering projects. But India’s vaster hinterland remains dirt poor—”

The World Hunger Index [GHI] says, “India is home to the largest number of poor in the world. The latest estimate suggests that over 400 million people live below the official poverty line… Given the nature of rural Indian economy all shades of poverty can be found in India—from moderate under-nutrition to extreme starvation.”

In fact, while China’s Communist Party and Mao are often accused and criticized for killing or allowing millions [estimates range from 16.5 million to 45 million based mostly on inflated numbers] to die of starvation in 1959 during the Great Leap Forward, “According to the 2010 GHI report, India is among 29 countries with the highest levels of hunger, stunted children, and poorly fed women.”

UNICEF reported in 2006 that, “10.9 million children under five die in developing countries each year. Malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause 60 percent of the deaths.”

If “the Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world’s hungry people,” as Think Quest.org says, then about two and a half million children die from malnutrition and hunger related diseases annually in India equaling twenty-five million deaths every decade or about 130 million deaths since the 1959 famine in China. In addition, the Times of India reported, India tops world hunger chart.

Continued on January 4, 2012 in The China-India Comparison with Lots of Facts – Part 5 or return to Part 3

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Note: This revised and edited post first appeared on October 22, 2010 as India Falling Short

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China and India at War ­in 1962 – Part 3/4

October 11, 2010

The Chinese moved their Eleventh and Fifty-fifth divisions to the front.

The Indian army had four brigades set up defensive positions along the only mountain road leading south through the harsh terrain.

At the same time, India was planning to attack the Chinese army.

In a risky flanking maneuver, the Chinese sent 1,500 troops along a dangerous mountain trail to attack India’s Army in the rear and cut them in half.

The Chinese troops succeeded, and the Chinese army launched an attack from the north along the road.

India’s Sixty-second Brigade collapsed the first day. Soon after, India’s Sixty-fifth Brigade abandoned their positions without a fight.

News of the Indian army’s defeat reached New Delhi.  The Indian people panicked. Large numbers of refugees started to flow south.

Chinese army troops had advanced into India past the disputed territory. China declared a unilateral cease fire.

There were abandoned Indian weapons everywhere and the Chinese troops gathered the weapons, which were returned to India. Then the Indian troops that were prisoners of war were released.

China’s army withdraw to the 1959 border keeping the disputed territory. The war ended without a treaty to resolve the border dispute.

India’s Casualties

Killed = 4,885
POW = 3,968
Wounded = 1,697

China’s casualties
Killed 722
Wounded 1,696

Go to China and India at War – Part 4 or return to Part 2 of China and India at War in 1962

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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