Yesterday I blogged about the stratospheric rise of the economies and populations of China and India and their surging economy– obviously something that has a huge impact on talent strategy and the global marketplace.  Today that’s tempered with a few words of warning, things you may want to know about your global partners.

Combined, China and India represent over 2/5ths of the worlds population. Put in a different light: nearly half of the global workforce.  

Yet we need to temper that with a few cold realities.  Socially, economically and politically these countries each have issues that undermine their ability to assimilate quickly to a global economy.  Yale Global writes:

“Both China and India are still desperately poor countries. Of the total of 2.3 billion people in these two countries, nearly 1.5 billion earn less than US$2 a day, according to World Bank calculations.  For all its Nobel Prizes and brilliant scholars and professionals, India is the largest single-country contributor to the pool of illiterate people in the world.”

We’ve also all heard about procurement issues in China, notably in 2007.  Knowledge at Wharton recently interviewed Marshall W. Meyer, professor of management at Wharton, who has made many trips to China to research the rapid growth of its economy and the successes and difficulties it has had in growing so quickly. In this interview, Meyer discusses the recent controversy surrounding China’s exports of substandard toys and pharmaceuticals to the United States, and the implications for supply-chain management.

I encourage you to read this series– some real opening information about the status of SCM and its economic impact.  Are these issues affecting your TM strategy?