Modi was born in the year of the tiger, according to the Chinese zodiac. If he can enable the Indian tiger to release more of its energy in economic growth in the next few years, it will raise the question of what China can do to face both the competition and opportunity from its more growth-driven Asian neighbor.

It is not an exaggeration to state that future relations with India will soon become a new focus in China's big-country diplomacy - in bilateral ties, in the G20 and BRICS groups and in the global efforts on climate change.

On the business-to-business level, the two countries already have had much closer ties than before the world's recent financial turmoil. But at the central government level, China will still have to learn to manage ties to at least avoid some of the blunders that Chinese companies, especially large state-owned enterprises, recently experienced in other parts of the world.

People like to say China is China and India is India, and the two countries will never be alike. This is a truism. On one important level, however, the two countries do share one common feature that is different from most developed countries and from the old textbook economics.

As latecomers in the game of development, both are more willing to take risks in using the government as a growth driver.

From Modi's Gujarat model to his salesmanship about the Indian dream and the new government's role in it, one can only imagine that he will pursue that line more fully, in strategy and in practice, than his predecessors. It is on this level that India's would-be competition with China will be of the most inspiring sort.

The benefit from this competition would be greater than any statistic could capture. It could help the two countries compare notes and learn from each other's successes and failures in matching government and market forces, and in the process also benefit other developing countries.

The author is editor-at-large of China Daily.

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