‘Industrial Revolution’ is a misnomer. Industry was just a thing to do after agriculture became easier. China and India are about half way through their ‘Agricultural Revolution’. According to the CIA World Factbook, a 45% of the 800 million labor force out of China’s 1.3 billion and 60% of India’s 500 million labor force out of 1.1 billion still work in agriculture. In the US, France and Poland the comparable numbers are 0.7%, 4.1%, and 16.1%. In the next couple of decades, we can expect Chinese and Indian algricultural sectors to achieve 100% labor efficiency improvements putting a total of 350 million people into manufacturing and services which will be a 50% rise. Over the next 100 years, we can expect them to catch up to France and put 96% of their labor forces away from agriculture. These are conservative predictions.

The corresponding aggressive predictions follow. If China’s per capita GDP continues to grow at 10% per year, it will catch up to the US in per capita GDP in about 20 years. If that happens in both China and India, we can expect a total of 600 million Chinese and Indian more people to be in the global non-farm labor force at that time. That latter number is an optimistic assessment which would require a 10,000% improvement in agricultural labor productivity (100x) from these two countries to bring them by 2027 to up to US 2007 agricultural productivity.

I also noticed that total fertility per woman in China is 1.75 and India is 2.75. Life expectancy is about six years lower in India, but 2.75*68 is a lot more than 1.75*73. If you throw in Hong Kong and Macao, China is even further ahead in life expectancy and income. Like the old Chinese curse, we may live in interesting times.