When Chinese prime minister Li Peng visited New Delhi in 1991, it was a momentous occasion for the two gigantic, mostly rural, developing countries. Both were adrift and isolated—India struggling in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, and China facing criticism of its human rights record.
Many things about the two countries were practically equal at the time—their GDP per capita was among the world’s lowest, they attracted a similar (nearly non-existent) amount of foreign direct investment, even the countries’ sanitation situation was equal.
“China, still ostracized internationally because of its human-rights record, and India, stranded by a self-imposed economic isolationism, are struggling to find new partnerships in an emerging global order neither appear to like very much,” the New York Times wrote at the time.
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