But many American executives and policymakers have not understood how these two Asian giants are progressing along different paths.

To understand how China is flying like a dragon, you must see how a quarter century after it began its transformation, hundreds of millions of Chinese have seen their prospects improve dramatically. The Chinese economy has blasted off. Foreign companies have poured more than $600 billion into China since 1978, far eclipsing what America spent on the Marshall Plan to save war-raged Europe after 1945.

The foreign investment in India is far smaller than in China. Foreign companies’ investment in India was just about $7.5 billion in the fiscal year that ended in last March. The companies invested the same amount in China every six weeks. India’s economy was lumbering alone, while China’s was flying into the future.