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Here is an article bursted the bubble of India's knowledge economy. Go read it before you even start bragging.

Many people, especially Americans, think that China's only competitive edge is its cheap labor. There is a saying: China is the workshop of the world, while India is the lab of the world. Well, not quite. According to the World Bank, China actually done really well in industrial innovation, entrepreneurship, as well as Research and Development.

The World Bank uses Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM) was designed as an interactive tool for benchmarking a country’s position vis-a-vis others in the global knowledge economy.

Overall, the KAM is best suited to providing a preliminary or ‘starter’ knowledge economy assessment of a country. It has the ability to identify quickly and succinctly key strengths and weaknesses, areas for development and even anomalies in the available data for a given country. The KAM results, however, should be treated with some caution. Further data sources and analysis are usually required to confirm issues or trends.

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/W...1414721,00.html

The 80 variables of the KAM represent the overall performance of the economy and the four pillars of the Knowledge Economy framework. The dataset is divided into seven functional cuts:
1)Overall Performance of the Economy
2)Economic Incentive and Institutional regime
• Economic Regime
• Governance
3)The Innovation System
4) Education and Human resources
• Education
• Gender
5)Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

The [b]KAM Knowledge Index (KI) measures a country's ability to generate, adopt and diffuse knowledge. This is an indication of overall potential of knowledge development in a given country. Methodologically, the KI is the simple average of the normalized performance scores of a country or region on the key variables in three Knowledge Economy pillars – education and human resources, the innovation system and information and communication technology (ICT).

The Knowledge Economy Index (KEI) takes into account whether the environment is conducive for knowledge to be used effectively for economic development. It is an aggregate index that represents the overall level of development of a country or region towards the Knowledge Economy. The KEI is calculated based on the average of the normalized performance scores of a country or region on all four pillars related to the knowledge economy - economic incentive and institutional regime, education and human resources, the innovation system and ICT.

These are the figures from key developed and developing countries in Asia.

KEI, Econ. Incentive Regime, Innovation, Education, ICT
Japan 8.35 7.74 9.27 8.08 8.30
Taiwan 8.10 7.63 8.97 6.94 8.85
Hong Kong 7.68 9.40 7.49 4.82 9.01
Korea 7.48 5.38 8.18 7.62 8.75
China 4.12 3.84 4.74 3.60 4.30
India 2.58 2.47 3.72 2.16 1.96

These are the figures from 1995 for comparison
KEI 1995, Econ. Incen. Regime 1995, Innovation 1995, Education 1995, ICT 1995
Japan 8.61 8.19 9.35 8.43 8.48
Taiwan 8.18 8.35 8.85 7.50 8.03
Hong Kong 7.77 9.43 7.09 5.60 8.95
Korea 7.51 6.55 7.47 8.11 7.93
China 2.85 2.32 3.94 3.48 1.68
India 2.79 2.86 3.51 2.38 2.40

Now here is the interesting part. Taiwan actually do a little bit better than Korea in most areas. China is the only country that has rapid progress in every area from 1995 to 2005. In fact, China is one of the few country that progress rapidly in world bank's Knowledge Assessment Methodology. China actually beat India in every area such as Knowledge Economy Index, innovations, education, and information technology. More importantly, the gap between China and India is widening, instead of narrowing.

It shouldnt be surprising that China is lag behind Korea and Japan in knowledge development. But we have hear so many times from western media that India is a knowledge based eonomy, while China is just a cheap labor bathtub!! The objective research shows the opposite. China is more innovative and more knowledge based than India!! And we are progressing much faster!!!

Go to http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/W...1414721,00.html for more info

Only very small percentage of Indians speak good English. I have heard of very few Indians speak good English in fact.
And your source is? Obviously you have not been to India at all.

Most Indians I know speak Indianized English which is extremely heard to understand.
Don't blame them for you ot being able to comprehend them. The Americans in the US have no such problem with the Indian-American English. Its probably how poor your English is. If you mean the Indians that you speak to when you call customer service, one can only imagine the problems Americans will have if the guy picking up the phone was a mainland Chinese

Speaking English itself does not make you competitive. Speaking bilingual or more language is what needed.
Most Indians speak 3 languages. India has more languages than China so lets not discuss bilingual or trilingual. It is an accepted fact that the average Indian speaks more languages than people in most other countries in the world. If you were to take Gengis Khan and me for an example, we speak atleast 4 languages. English, German, Hindi and our native language (Kannada for me, Marathi for Gengis). Further, I also speak semi-fluent Mandarin and French. All educated Indians speak atleast two languages. This can go upto four in the citie.

At this point, Indians in general do no better than the Chinese. In fact, China mostly have the edge here since their people have good base in their onwn language.
So you're saying Indians don't know their own language as well as the Chinese know theirs? Kinda pathetic your argument, dont you think??

And service industry itself will never lift most Indians out of poverty anyways. Traditionally, countries need to develop its manufacturing sector before it develop its service sector. India took the short cut in this aspect which I think will come back to bite them.
Well it means we don't pollute our environment like you chinese are polluting yours. You are just crying sour grapes here. (I hope you understand the phrase since you're evidently Chinese). I would like you to substantiate the statement you made about which industry musr develop first and why? If India took the short-cut like you say, it also means that it choked China's chance of taking over the service sector. So we'll see how that turns out. China will become more expensive as a manufacturing sector. It is easier to shift manufacturing out of a country than services. Training people to run machines is easier than training them to offer services which is why services cost more and is a step above manufacturing.

That's a pretty sweet dream, but the reality is only Indian elites speak English. Most Indians speak their own local languages and need to rely on interpreters to speak with officials or Indians from other provinces.
There you go, contradicting yourself. First you allude that Indians don't speak their language well enough and now you say they speak only their language. Which one? Is jealousy clouding your judgement?

I get you. I have same feeling of my Indian co-workers too. Don't get me started..sign..
I don't care what you think. When we have a Chinese born and educated CEO of a firm like McKinsey or Pepsi, we can consider your argument. Even in China, most high-level managers are non-Chinese. HongKongese or Taiwanese are a majority of the chinese who head MNC's in China. Its an accepted fact, even coming from papers released by McKinsey and the likes that China is quite short of managerial talent. And its an accepte fact that managers are more valuable than underlings. Like I said, I am waiting for a Chinese global CEO of an MNC.