Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and most of the Chinese east coast are first class, first rate cities with a very high standard of living and modern infrastructure. You'd think you were in Japan, South Korea, or the US. It's really come a long way since the 1970s. It's not at all as I pictured it growing up. It does get poor outside the cities however. It does have its issues that we all know about. But in terms of appearances, it's 9/10 at least. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. China has almost always been a power base through its entire history.
Even if religious fascism doesn't lead to disintegration (and it might not—the inherited steel frame is quite strong), it is still a tremendous distraction from economic development, for voters, baboos, and politicians alike.
India is playing both sides, not acting like a leader of the free world.
They need to lose the caste system and stop buying Russian gas. That would be a start, but more beyond that if this century "were to belong" to them. I think the idea of a century belonging to one country is ludacris.
Honestly this axis is pretty good. It's scaled for easy reading, the scales are identical for both, there's not logarithmic or power scaling going on, etc.
A fixed jump, solidly different colors that aren't TOO associated with normal western biases (red bad, green good; this is pastels so somewhat escapes that), scaling accurately without visual tricks. For this data this is a really good graph.
Read some Edward Tufte or the like to get an idea of what bad and good visual displays of information look like.
