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One of the many reasons Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympic Games was that, it was hoped, a massive influx of international visitors—journalists in tow—would help push the central government to lessen restrictions on China’s own domestic media. One dramatic outcome would have been a lasting breach in the Great Firewall of China, the country’s highly advanced internet censorship apparatus.

While policies relaxed for foreign journalists reporting from China during the Olympics appear to be a welcome, permanent fixture, citizens reporting on events within China still have their work cut out for them. Four months after the lighting of the Olympic torch there seems to be little official progress in the movement to expand internet free speech to the masses of the great Middle Kingdom. China’s citizens, however, think otherwise.

Glowing praise issued from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on the success of the Beijing games conveniently did not mention the few crackdowns, arrests, and internet censorship activities that occurred during the month-long spectacle.

Such admonishment was left to others, like Human Rights Watch’s Minky Worden, who chastised the IOC for leaving out of its fact sheets “the extent to which the International Olympic Committee lowered its standards on human rights around the Beijing Olympic Games.” Similarly, Bob Dietz of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) commented, “I think, in the end, the government’s approach to the media hasn’t changed that much.”

Indeed, a recent report from CPJ concludes “more Internet journalists are jailed worldwide today than journalists working in any other medium…45 percent of all media workers jailed worldwide are bloggers, Web-based reporters, or online editors.” China continues its ten-year streak at the top of this list. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article appears in the 25th anniversary issue of World Policy Journal. For the month of November, read the entire 25th anniversary issue, fall 2008, for free!

Few would have predicted 25 years ago India’s dramatic rise as a global economic force, imagined that one day the iconic British luxury brands Range Rover and Jaguar would be purchased by an Indian company, or believed that the United States would form a strategic partnership with a staunch ally of its Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union. In 1983, India’s claim to international attention was pretty much limited to its surprise win of the Cricket World Cup in England. This was a turning point for the game, no doubt, but hardly an event that augured the birth of a world power.

Yet, on the basis of its surprise leap over the past decade onto the stage of emerging powers, many are now predicting a fantastic future for India. They see India as the tortoise to China’s hare, the second-place runner who may look like he’s far behind but who in the end will out-distance the complacent champion. Viewed through this prism, India’s democracy is supposed to confer a special advantage over China’s state-directed system, messier in the immediate term perhaps, but better able to withstand in the long run the buffeting social, political, and environmental winds of rapid economic transformation. Continue reading…

As India’s parliament debates whether or not to approve the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement today, more than the fate of the deal itself is at stake. The fate of India’s government, a coalition of multiple political parties headed by the Congress Party, and the political future of the country hangs in the balance. One thing is not in doubt: India may well be the most openly corrupt democracy in the world.
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Welcome to the debut of The World Policy Blog, what we at World Policy Journal believe will be a whole new way of looking at the globe – not from an American perspective of “foreign” being everything outside the United States, but a world in all its variety and fascination, how nations, regions, and people interact among themselves. Our goal is to build a community of informed individuals who will come together here to exchange views or simply absorb interesting, perhaps controversial, but always provocative takes on events or trends that are shaping the world where we live – a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of human beliefs and emotions.

As a first step, today, I’d like to tell you, the members of this community (simply by virtue of your coming here to read our thoughts and observations – we will never require you to identify yourselves) about a gathering at World Policy Institute last week. We had a visit from 11 Iraqi sheikhs and provincial governors, representing critical regions in this war-torn nation.
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