Really? On what basis do you make this astounding claim? Do you know that chinese executed more than 10,000 people in 2005. Or is that the past?

On the contrary, violence begets violence. Falsification of history, such as denial of mass killings by Mao and murder of peaceful Tianamen square protestors, is going to lead to its repitition. Do you think that Tibetans after death of dalai lama are going to peacefully negotiate? Do you think that groups within China itself dont understand the logic and advantages of violence?

so is china an ideological alternative to the Washington consensus. perhaps, but unlikely given the blood. india has already experimented with central planning and its unlikely she has the willpower to try a Chinese like nation-building process and more authoritarian political and social structure. more likely, china will drift toward the west and become like hong kong.

but India will remain somewhat more fragmented and that will have consequences but she’ll be more free as well, and arguably attract capital for that very reason. they’ll risk the $87,000 rug, considering the alternative.

For China, the savagery belongs to the past. Lets dwell on the immediacy of the Omlettes that the Maoists are going to cook of the elite beginning with central India now. How organic India’s growth has been will soon come out in the open when the shakeup of the old, top heavy bee colony begins as it is abandoned before it crashes to the ground.

i don’t think he meant the growth in and off itself is unprincipled, but rather doing it within the context of a single-party dictatorship. Now this argument may also be too unkind to china’s economic liberalization because if one considers the brutal communist conditions from which they started, things are much more “principled” now.

nonetheless, its likely china is now benefiting from one of the most brutal nation-building processes ever witnessed, wiping out ethnic identities and replacing them with a nationalist one and then and even more brutal process of socialization. india, for all the incompatance and brutality that was their socialism, never quite devolved into such totalitarian madness and there’s something to be said about that.

anyway, time will tell if the emerging beourgosie will demand political freedoms to go along with their economic ones, but either way a lot of eggs where broken for that omelette.

In any case you are confirming the previous poster’s point that demonisation of Pakistan is widespread in Indian society.

e.g. When I was in college, going to the toilet was called “visiting Pakistan”.

I’m sure soldiers referring to maoist territory as “Pakistan” doesn’t at all imply that they somehow think that its really Pakistanis there.

Your enthusiasm for china is all too reminiscent of 30s admiration of stalinist USSR by western intellecturals or more recent infatuation with Maoist China by third-world world progressives.

The truth is that we dont have much information about china from the free press. The govt exerts an enormous amount of control over economic and political issues – and the citizenry for the most part goes along with it. At the same time, we do get reports about tens of thousands being forcibly removed from their lands for industry, hundreds of execution on a routine basis, poisoned milk and toys and so on. And this is just the tip of the ice-berg visible to us..

No question that China has raised the economic standard for their poor, using force wherever the Communist party feels its needed. There is a lot too learn also from the provision of services for most of its citizens and ensuring that women are mostly free to work and express themselves. But I think its fair to say that little is known about the means adopted and their consequences; and some real challenges with the historical falsification and hyper-nationalism that is widely supported and promoted by the chinese govt.