From the Periphery to the Semi-Core: A World-System Analysis of the Fall and Rise of China and the Indian Sub-Continent (1757-2014)

Since the sixteenth century when the modern capitalist system was born in Europe, some of the powers rose to dominate world economy whereas some others fell from the apex to the secondary level. Some others, erstwhile world empires controlling sea and land trade between Asia and Europe, fell from being the center to become the periphery. China and India were the heart of pre-modern global economy controlled by world empires; they turned into peripheries of the capitalist structure of world trade starting around the sixteenth century. The two regions were occupied, colonized, de-industrialized, and their resources were exploited to industrialize and modernize the core countries comprised of Western Europe and the United States. Producing about half of the world GDP by 1600, China and Indian Sub-Continent were peripheralized in such a manner that by the middle of the twentieth century when they were liberated, they were producing less than 5 percent of the world GDP only.;This study analyzes three distinctive phases of modern capitalist history and explains increasing complexifications that, collectively, are paving a way to the emergence of the semi-core in the world-system. It argues that countries require economic and strategic national powers to maintain their positional standing in the hierarchical structure of the capitalist world-system. In the eighteenth century, Western powers could grow, expand, and occupy vast regions in the world, particularly China and India, because they commanded superior military capability and demonstrated it in the battlegrounds. They converted these regions into peripheries to serve the interests of the core: provision of the raw material, consumption of the products, and facilitation in the flow of capital to be accumulated in the core. After having extracted enormous resources from these regions, the core had created an unbridgeable gap between itself and the rest of the world when decolonization started. For three decades, China and India adopted the statist model of growth but could grow only modestly. Capitalism ensured that the growth could take place only when these countries submit to the interests of the core. It also designed, developed, and implemented two world-orders (economic world-order and strategic world-order) within the hierarchical structure of the world-system and placed countries according to their utilitarian value. Whereas China and India maintained a far higher positional standing in the economic world order, the core has been hesitant to let them command far higher position in strategic world-order. The hierarchical structure of strategic world-order, on the other, placed Pakistan at a far higher position but lowered it very down in economic world-order. The framework of this study helps to explain the economic rise of China and India; it also explains why Pakistan grew more militarily than economically.;The complexification process in the world-system can be explained by the increasing spread of civil and industrial technology in the world. Since the stratification of production processes is what enables the core to accumulate capital, it has encouraged compartmentalization of the division of labor by spreading production, assembly, and consumption throughout the globe in horizontal as well as vertical manner. Some of the developing countries have been growing at far more faster rates than the rest; this uneven pace of growth has produced another tier within the division of labor and the world-system: the semi-core. Comprised of the fast-developing economies as well as strong militaries in the developing world, the semi-core is a strategy by the core to slow down the trickling down of technologies of mass-scale production and to dissuade the aspirations of the rising powers. So far, the core and its capitalist world-system have been successful in its quest of accumulation of capital and survival against all the odds; the reason also includes that it has maintained the most powerful military might to inflict unbearable damage upon the areas damaging its primary interest of the accumulation of capital. The capitalist world-system is so innovative that it is expected to survive for the time being. Its eventual demise, however, is inevitable because of climate change, global warming, and ecological collapse.