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?

Tony Blair recently spoke at Yale’s2008 Class Day. He noted that “for the first time in many centuries, power is moving East. China and India each have populations roughly double those of America and Europe combined. In the next two decades, these two countries together will undergo industrialisation four times the size of the USA’s and at five times the speed.”

For those of us who work in global organizations– and that’s nearly everyone– those figures are stunning.  Think about the implications of 4x the size and 5x the speed of what’s occuring in America right now.  Bring those numbers down closer to home– 5x the speed of your company, your department, your job. 

Dominic Barton wrote in the McKinsey Quartely “Whether or not you do business in China, you can’t ignore it. Everyone knows the superlatives: how it consumes a huge percentage of global resources—25 percent of the world’s steel and 50 percent of the world’s cement, for example; how it is home to some of the largest companies on Earth, four of which cracked the most recent Fortune Global 500 list; how its economy will soon rival those of leading countries such as France and the United Kingdom.”

Executives around the world expect competition from Chinese companies to increase, mainly because of their low production costs, yet surprisingly few are acting to meet the threat, a McKinsey survey shows. A separate survey of executives based in China reveals widespread global ambitions.

So if those are all the superlatives, what are the obstacles?  What do we as talent strategists need to understand to compete and partner in a global economy?  Part II of this blog will focus on Eastern business, social and generational problems– but in the meantime– what are you and your company doing to understand increasing global competition and partnerships?