Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said it best last week when he told a nightly news programme in the United States that the world's economic centre of gravity was shifting to the Asia-Pacific.
The Putonghua-speaking former diplomat said China represented a huge opportunity for all in the 21st century, and it should not be simply viewed as 'all threats and all risks'.
Anil Gupta and Haiyan Wang make a convincing case that India is also a growing core global business hub and the two countries must be an integral part of any worldwide corporate strategy.
In Getting China and India Right, the authors insist that multinationals must leverage the best of both Bangalore and Beijing to create a network of international centres as they move away from a command-and-control style of organisation to a connect-and-co-ordinate structure straddling the planet.
Gupta and Wang argue that it is not enough for companies to have a beachhead in India or China, or even both countries. The activities there need to be part of the corporate DNA if the firms are to capitalise on the growth, human resources and capacity for innovation that the two countries offer.
They suggest that India and China are similar and different enough to offer opportunities for convergence and technology transfer.