Comparing India and China - some interesting maps

The Economist has a very interesting map which puts the progress of India in some global perspective

Comparing Indian states and territories with countries

An Indian summary

Which countries match the GDP and population of India's states and territories?

How big is Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state? One way of answering the question is to take its total area: 95,000 square miles (246,000 sq km). Another way is to think of it as a country. If Uttar Pradesh were to declare independence, it would be the world’s fifth most populous country (as the map below shows, it has about the same number of residents as Brazil). Yet its economy would only be the size of Qatar, a tiny oil-rich state of fewer than 2m people. That makes it poor on a per person basis. Despite India’s two decades of rapid growth, Uttar Pradesh’s GDP per head is close to that of Kenya. The map below presents country equivalents for India’s states and territories in terms of GDP, GDP per person (in PPP terms) and population. 

It also has one on China which merits a scrutiny.

Comparing Chinese provinces with countries

Which countries match the GDP, population and exports of Chinese provinces?

China is now the world’s second-biggest economy, but some of its provinces by themselves would rank fairly high in the global league. Our map shows the nearest equivalent country. For example, Guangdong's GDP (at market exchange rates) is almost as big as Indonesia's; the output of both Jiangsu and Shandong exceeds Switzerland’s. Some provinces may exaggerate their output: the sum of their reported GDPs is 10% higher than the national total. But over time the latter has consistently been revised up, suggesting that any overstatement is modest.

What about other economic yardsticks? Guangdong exports as much as South Korea, Jiangsu as much as Taiwan. Shanghai’s GDP per person is as high as Saudi Arabia’s (at purchasing-power parity), though still well below that in China’s special administrative regions, Hong Kong and Macau. At the other extreme, the poorest province, Guizhou, has an income per head close to that of India. Note that these figures use the same PPP conversion rate for the whole of China, but prices are likely to be lower in poorer provinces than in richer ones, slightly reducing regional inequality.