Class and Inequality in China and India, 1950–2010 is the latest book by Vamsi Vakulabharanam, an eminent economist, and recipient in 2013 of the first and only Amartya Sen Award. The book, published in 2025, is the fourth publication in the Oxford India-China Studies series. It undertakes a comparative study of inequality through the lens of class in China and India, situating its analysis within the broader scholarship on comparative political economy.
The author offers three convincing reasons for the comparison between Indian and Chinese cases: similar population sizes and spatial diversity; the lessons they could offer to developing countries on a similar path towards economic growth; and the significance of their respective experiences for the global economy (pp. 3-4). The book starts in the mid-20th century, the period when India and China started charting new trajectories in the aftermath of colonialism. This time frame is particularly relevant to international political economy as it depicts the beginning of decolonization in Asia and the rise of global capitalism. Through his analysis, Vakulabharanam traces New Delhi and Beijing’s parallel yet diverse paths in their respective development and redistribution stories even as he undertakes a comparison between the two.
Vakulabharanam has provided a quantitative and historical account of economic inequalities in India and China across three levels. First, at the level of individual inequality within the two countries through urban-rural and regional differences; second, inequality among individuals using a class framework; and third, how these inequalities are positioned within the global capitalist system (p. 2). He divides the study into two historical phases. For China, the two main periods are the Mao era (1949-1976) and the post-Mao period. For India, the periods are 1951-1983 and post-1983. The author successfully connects domestic developments in the context of inequality in China and India to global capitalism, presenting a long-term analysis of inequality through a class-based lens that is often overlooked in the existing literature.
Due to a lack of primary data, Vakulabharanam evaluates inequality patterns during Mao’s era through an examination of post-revolution policies aimed at reducing wealth differences in the country. These include measures such as collectivization, universal literacy programmes, public health reforms, and heavy industrialization—which shaped China’s social and economic patterns—and how they influenced inequality patterns in the country. A study of this particular phase’s equalizing and dis-equalizing tendencies reveals a significant decline in the overall economic inequality even when growth stabilized at around 4.4 per cent annually (p. 27). Vakulabharanam looks at how movements and policies such as collectivization, communization, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, creation of state-owned enterprises, and rustication and re-rustication campaigns influenced inequality patterns in China during this period.
For the post-Mao era, Vakulabharanam uses primary data from the China Household Income Project (CHIP) and the Chinese Family Panel Survey (CFPS). He further divides the period into smaller phases for closer study, arranging the years so that each sub-division roughly corresponds to changes in leadership and two successive Five-Year Plans. He examines how market reforms, urbanization, and regional disparities led to rising inequality in China. Chapter 4, devoted to China’s class dimensions, identifies eight social classes, five urban and three rural. This period is described as a ‘great retreat’ from the earlier era of equality in China (p. 53). Inequality increased sharply due to widening gaps, both between and within classes. Vakulabharanam includes factors such as the household registration system (Hukou), rapid urbanization, rural-urban gap, and regional differences in his analysis. To examine the post-Mao era, he takes a flexible approach to study both the equalizing and de-equalizing forces of income inequality. His analysis recognizes that these factors are not constant over time—for example, net transfers became more equalizing in the later period. For these reasons, among others, the book is an original contribution by a Marxist scholar that challenges the official Chinese narrative which claims an absence of class divisions within the country. The author persuasively argues why class is central to understanding inequality in China.
In his exploration of inequality in India, Vakulabharanam’s arguments are similar to the dominant view that the promises made during the nationalist movement to create an egalitarian India were subsequently overcome by the class system. The dominant classes decisively protected their own interests by maintaining existing inequalities. Tussles between dominant classes, however, pushed the state in different directions (p. 100). In the first 35 years after Independence, despite significant regional differences, three dominant classes—urban capitalists, urban professionals working in government and public and private sector enterprises, and rich peasants—consolidated their positions. Later, in the period after 1983, capitalist and managerial classes, along with those closely allied to these top groups, as well as rural elites who had urbanized themselves, became the dominant classes (p. 155). The book analyses inequality patterns among different classes against the background of implementation (or lack thereof) of landmark legislations such as the land ceiling laws, redistributive taxation, Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Act, Green Revolution, and so on.
Vakulabharanam compares inequality patterns between India and China through land reform and collectivization, welfare-oriented policies, market- and business-friendly measures, and neoliberal phases. He argues that both countries began from similar starting points in terms of economy, poverty, and inequality. Both introduced policies to address the retrogression of earlier centuries but adopted different systems: China experimented with socialism, while India followed a mixed economy system. The two experienced different trends until the 1980s, with China managing inequality reductions more effectively. In the post-1980s neoliberal phase, both experienced rising levels of inequality. Across the two cases, the author argues that inequality cannot be explained by market dynamics alone, and that global capitalism and major crises also shape internal inequality patterns.
The book employs the Gini Coefficient as a primary tool for comparison and uses around 125 charts and figures to support its analyses. Its greatest strength lies in its comparative and class-based approach. Vakulabharanam is successful in using comparative political economy frameworks while managing to avoid the problems associated with Methodological nationalisms. By placing class at the centre of his analysis, he effectively questions mainstream economic theories that reduce inequality to mere income or consumption gaps. The integration of global capitalist forces into national inequality trends contribute significantly to his analysis, as well as to the broader literature. In terms of structure, clear chapterization, periodization, and the use of both primary and secondary data enhance the flow of arguments as well as the credibility of the author’s findings. A minor criticism of Vakulabharanam’s work is his exclusion of post-2010 data analysis for the Indian case, which he justifies by citing the unavailability of National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) survey data. This, however, seems unconvincing since similar data from other sources, such as the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), is available and could have been analysed. While he briefly comments on the post-2010 period in the concluding chapter, the discussion is insufficient for readers seeking continuity with contemporary inequality debates. Despite these limitations, Vakulabharanam’s book, Class and Inequality in China and India, stands out for its Marxist interpretation of inequality, and for providing a compelling alternative to the dominant approaches to study inequality, such as the Kuznets hypothesis and Piketty’s theoretical framework.
Tapan Bharadwaj is Senior Researcher with the China Research Programme (CRP) at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS). His research focuses on climate change, clean energy transition, global environmental governance, and Chinese foreign policy. He is studying for a Ph.D. from the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Delhi, Delhi.