Billions of Entrepreneurs

I liked this book very much. Tarun Khanna brings a hands-on perspective to the times in which we live, to the transformation of China and India, to the shift of the global balance of power from Europe and North America to Asia, from the Atlantic to the Indian and Pacific oceans. He ofers a wide range of interesting ideas and insights, he writes well, he provides a wealth of detail based on his extensive travels and meetings, and he has a pleasantly light touch, providing personal details and asides which bring his encounters and experiences vividly to life

Khanna’s book examines the consequences of this gigantic change, in particular in these two countries, and then takes it a step further. He recounts the legacy of conflit and the guarded and often chilly distance between them and their leaderships and cultures in the years after World War II. Then he explores their similarities and diferences, and goes on to discuss ways in which they can work co-operatively with one another. As will be obvious, there is a huge amount of information to be addressed in this undertaking.The author has structured his views and ideas very effectively. He starts out by assessing the Western, primarily the US, view of the two countries. His research shows that for many years less than 2% of the major stories in the New York Times have covered China or India, albeit that number has more recently risen to 4%. His goal, at least in part, in writing his book, is to contribute to the overcoming of this Western ignorance of the two countries. He then gives examples of Chinese-Indian joint ventures, including Mahindra & Mahindra (tractors) and Huawei (telephone switches), both of which make surprising reading. He calls this new interaction mutualism, emphasizing that it has measures of both co-operation and mistrust.