Structural change and economic development in China and India. (Preliminary draft, not to be quoted) Vittorio Valli (University of Turin) 1 1. Introduction China since 1978 and India since 1992 have passed through a phase of very rapid economic growth accompanied by very important structural changes in the productive systems and severe and largely unresolved social problems. The aim of this paper is to evaluate and compare some aspects of the different growth patterns of the two economies analyzing in particular the relations between structural change and economic development. In doing so, we will utilise two concepts: Gerschenkron’s “relative economic backwardness” 2 and “the fordist model of growth” 3 . The first concept is well known and stresses the fact that an emerging backwards economy may benefit of some advantages, such as the adoption of modern technologies coming from more advanced countries and the possibility of transferring large masses of labour force from low productivity sectors (agriculture and traditional tertiary activities) to sectors with a higher productivity (industry and modern services). The second concept, which is not to be confused with the more general, concept of “fordism” of Gramsci or of the French regulationist school, 4 is mainly associated to a phase of strong growth of some interlinked industrial and service sectors where scale economy and network economies are of crucial importance. 1 Professor of economic policy (vittorio.valli@ unito.it). The paper belongs to a Vittorio Alfieri research project on the Chinese and Indian economies financed by the CRT Foundation. I thank G. Balcet, M. Deaglio, S. Dalmazzone, C. Grua, L. Sau and D. Saccone for comments on the fist draft of this paper. 2 See Gerschenkron (1962) and Fua (1980) 3 See Valli (2002), (2005) 4 While my concept of “fordist model of growth” mainly regards the core of economic transformation, the concept of fordism of the French regulationist school (Boyer and other authors) is much wider and regards also the relations of the economic aspects with socio-political and institutional changes, the organization of labour and of production in the firms and the social conditions of workers. Their approach, which is is partly a derivation of Gramsci’s concept of fordism, is fascinating, but it is probably overly ambitious, since it implies the existence of a fully integrated social science.