A fascinating op-ed story in today’s Times about India kept bringing to mind another country…the name eludes me at the moment.

INDIA is a roaring capitalist success story.” So says the latest issue of Foreign Affairs; and last week many leading business executives and politicians in India celebrated as Lakshmi Mittal, the fifth richest man in the world, finally succeeded in his hostile takeover of the Luxembourgian steel company Arcelor. India’s leading business newspaper, The Economic Times, summed up the general euphoria over the event in its regular feature, “The Global Indian Takeover”: “For India, it is a harbinger of things to come — economic superstardom.”

This sounds persuasive as long as you don’t know that Mr. Mittal, who lives in Britain, announced his first investment in India only last year. He is as much an Indian success story as Sergey Brin, the Russian-born co-founder of Google, is proof of Russia’s imminent economic superstardom.

In recent weeks, India seemed an unlikely capitalist success story as communist parties decisively won elections to state legislatures, and the stock market, which had enjoyed record growth in the last two years, fell nearly 20 percent in two weeks, wiping out some $2.4 billion in investor wealth in just four days. This week India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, made it clear that only a small minority of Indians will enjoy “Western standards of living and high consumption.”

Please check it out. The article notes that indeed India is advancing at a breathtaking rate, quite beyond belief, actually. But then, nagging facts like this rear their ugly heads, raining on India’s glorious parade.

But the increasingly common, business-centric view of India suppresses more facts than it reveals. Recent accounts of the alleged rise of India barely mention the fact that the country’s $728 per capita gross domestic product is just slightly higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa and that, as the 2005 United Nations Human Development Report puts it, even if it sustains its current high growth rates, India will not catch up with high-income countries until 2106.

And so it goes. Read it, and let me know if another country comes to your mind as well. Both of these countries have inconceivable potential and will certainly be “the place to be” for many years to come. But that doesn’t make their problems and challenges less acute or more solvable, and anyone who blocks out the darker side of these countries’ ascension is only fooling himself.

China’s New Police Force
A guest post by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

Control, control, control, China’s autocratic, one-party state Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to want control, but its reach continually exceeds its grasp. That is why it needs police, extra police, police not only from within but also from without its country.

In our age of dwindling resources and increasing global communications, the CCP’s small cadre of self-appointed elitists sees the future only as one of control. It has its goal set not only on controlling the resource rich territories that belong to the people of Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia etc. but it also seeks to control democratic Taiwan as well as to prevent its own people from entertaining any ideas of participation in self-government. This is a daunting task, a task that can only be accomplished if it regularly enlists the services of outside police.

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Mr. Brown and I used to trade emails now and then when I lived in Singapore, so this story is particularly galling to me. I suspect the censors are going to deeply regret it. Mr. Brown’s following is even larger than Xia Xue’s, if you can imagine it, and they will not go gentle into that good night. This truly and totally sucks and I heartily support myrick’s “four million fingers” campaign (see the link for details).

Mr. Brown, please hang in there. A lot of people love you, and I want to think this will ultimately lead to demands for increased freedom of expression in Singapore. Am I being naive?

Shocking. Thanks to ESWN fo the translation of this heartbreaking story.

Expect Paul to be crucified by the Malkin/FrontPage crowd (again).

The Treason Card
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 7, 2006

The nature of the right-wing attack on The New York Times – an attack not on the newspaper’s judgment, but on its motives – seems to have startled many people in the news media. After an editorial in The Wall Street Journal declared that The Times has what amount to treasonous intentions – that it “has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it” – The Journal’s own political editor pronounced himself “shocked,” saying that “I don’t know anybody on the news staff of The Wall Street Journal that believes that.”

But anyone who was genuinely shocked by The Journal’s willingness to play the treason card must not have been paying attention these past five years.

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Brilliant and charming, as always.

This kind of thing seems to be in vogue at the moment.

Taiwan plans to test-fire a missile capable of hitting China, alarming the island’s main ally, the United States, a cable news network said on Thursday.

The Hsiung Feng III, developed by Taiwan’s Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, has a range of 600 km (360 miles) and is accurate to within half a meter, the online edition of cable news network ETTV (http://www.ettoday.com) said, quoting unnamed military sources.

That range would put areas along China’s coast from Fuzhou in Fujian Province to Nan’ao in Guangdong within striking distance of the missile, the Web site said. A defense ministry spokesman declined to comment on the report when reached by telephone. A spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry also declined to comment.

China, which has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since their split in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war, has deployed nearly 800 short-range ballistic missiles aimed at the self-ruled island in case it formally declares independence.

Taiwan successfully test-fired the missile last year, local media have reported, and the Web site said the next test was planned for September.

This post is for readers’ information only – no time to opine. To my good friend in Fujian province, be sure to stock up on bottled water and duct tape.

Update: See Tigerhawk’s post on this for a fresh if extreme perspective; he says it’s cause for the US to “cut Taiwan loose.” (Tigerhawk pointed me to this story in a comment to the previous post; thanks.)

On days like this I just want to close the whole thing down (goodbye, site traffic). Apologies.

Everyone here knows Joseph Bosco is a good friend of mine, which doesn’t mean we always see eye to eye. (We have different opinions about the CCP, for example.) But part of being someone’s friend is to not allow such disagreements to ruin what’s at the heart of the friendship – respect, trust and admiration. So I invite all readers to head over to Joseph’s site to read his defense of Philip Cunningham and to be open-minded to Joseph’s argument. Most of you know I find Cunningham articulate and smart (to say the very least). I also think he tends too often to deflect criticism of China and change the subject to the US. Like Cunningham, I am a proud liberal. But being a liberal doesn’t only mean criticizing America. I am an equal opportunity critic of any country that represses its people, of any country that sets up a Gitmo or that imprisons Hao Wu. Go read Joseph’s take on the subject and leave a comment. (For whatever reason, Cunningham seems to be a bit of a lightning rod for both sides, so you can expect some pointed arguments.)

Go to the July 6th entry and just keep scrolling down (sorry China readers, it’s a blogspot link). A great photographic reminder of what true leadership is.