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  • 2020
  • Chapter
  • Routledge Handbook of China–India Relations

Reflections on Comparing China and India

By: Tarun Khanna
  • Format:Print
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Abstract

In this essay, the introductory chapter to an edited volume (Bajpai, Ho and Miller (edited), Routledge Handbook of China-India Relations, 2020), I reflect on two decades of my comparative scholarship on the trajectories of modern China and India, with a lens that emphasizes the actions of individual entrepreneurs in these very different milieus. I do this by first asking, “Why compare?” I then share my own emergent approach to this comparison, emphasizing my rather non-traditional immersion in the world of practice alongside my scholarly endeavors, as a way of honing insights. After all, as the preeminent social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1951) said, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” Finally, I reflect on what I feel has, or has not, changed in the past two decades in China and India, pointing to things that I think I got right and those that I did not.

Keywords

Country Analysis; Comparative Analysis; International Relations; Entrepreneurship; China; India

Citation

Khanna, Tarun. "Reflections on Comparing China and India." Chap. 1 in Routledge Handbook of China–India Relations, edited by Kanti Bajpai, Selina Ho, and Manjari Chatterjee Miller, 18–32. New York: Routledge, 2020.
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About The Author

Tarun Khanna

Strategy
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More from the Author
  • Is Hybrid Work the Best of Both Worlds? Evidence from a Field Experiment By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Christos A. Makridis and Kyle Schirmann
  • Talent@Tencent By: Tarun Khanna, Shu Lin and Nancy Hua Dai
  • A Note on Contextual Intelligence By: Caroline M. Elkins, Tarun Khanna, Vikram S. Gandhi, Karen G. Mills and Leonard A. Schlesinger
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