India vs. China : On Innovation and Competitiveness

As per a Feb 2009 Report, “The Atlantic Century : Benchmarking EU & U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness”  from The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), China stands at 33 with 36.0 points while India finishes the last in the list of 40 countries in the world with 21.6 points.

What is the basis for these Rankings?

To create a holistic understanding of how a country is performing in terms
of global competitiveness and whether or not that performance is expected
to continue, decline, or increase in the future, ITIF used the following 16
indicators to evaluate the global competitiveness of the United States and
other countries:
1. Human capital: higher education attainment in the population ages
25–34; and the number of science and technology researchers per
1,000 employed.
2. Innovation capacity: corporate investment in research and
development (R&D); government investment in R&D; and share of the
world’s scientific and technical publications.
3. Entrepreneurship: venture capital investment; and new firms.
4. Information technology (IT) infrastructure: e-government;
broadband telecommunications; and corporate investment in IT.
5. Economic policy: effective marginal corporate tax rates; and the
ease of doing business.
6. Economic performance: trade balance; foreign direct investment
inflows; real GDP per working-age adult; and productivity.

And when it comes to overall change from 1999 to Feb 2009 on similar ranking, China tops the list with 19.5 points while India secured the spot of 14 with 13.6.

So these rankings indicate that over the last 10 years, China is becoming competitive and innovative faster and better than the rest of the world while it has lot catching up to do in absolute world rankings. And India still lags behind China with wider margin in both the change as well as absolute rankings.