Earlier this week, my colleague William Antholis became the fourth contributor to our Brookings Essay series. His piece is based on a five-month trip he and his family took through China and India last year, during which he conducted hundreds of interviews, including with government leaders, academics, entrepreneurs, teachers, and—inevitably and often revealingly—taxi drivers.
His thesis, grounded in his relentless reporting, is that the shift in power from central governments to provinces in China and states in India is changing those countries and therefore—given their size and importance—changing our world. He finds parallels between what’s happening in the two Asian giants and “the Metropolitan Revolution” that his Brookings colleagues Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley write about in their new book. In the true Brookings spirit, Bill concludes with recommendations on how the United States and other countries should adjust their diplomacy to take account of this trend.
Read more about how things work on a local level in China and India and why it matters, in New Players on the World Stage: Chinese Provinces and Indian States: