India looks brighter than China on a map, but really it’s not

(Image of Earth's City Lights)

The State Grid Corporation of China has provided three reasons for why India shines brighter than China in the Earth's City Lights of image, a NASA project to map urbanization.

According to the Shanghai based media outlet The Paper, India has more plains than China and is surrounded by seas on three sides, which makes the lights appear brighter. Forty-percent of Indian lands are plain and the mean attitude of the Deccan Plateau is less than 1,000 meters, while China's plains make up 12 percent. More than half of China is made up high-altitude plateaus and mountains, home to about 28 percent of population, which makes the western and northern regions of China seem dim in comparison.

Official data shows China is more urbanized than India, as the percentage of urbanization in China is 57 percent compared to India's 35 percent. In the map, India has more lights from villages, which take up more space, while China has more large cities that appear as big, round lights that are not as intense as the lights in India.

Actually, the map does not measure the intensity of the lights. But India has more blue and green lights and fewer red and orange lights, the latter of which refer to developed areas.

Experts say India is developing at a high speed, but not at the same pace as China both in terms of economy and electricity consumption.

According to the Economic Times in India, more than 300 million Indians are living without electricity and more than 18,000 villages don't have electricity.