China, the economic miracle, the future Superpower is compared to India and we are all in awe about the march by huge strides that China in its Juggernaut form moves ahead. Can we beat China? or even Match China? What about our Security vis a vis Chinese buddyhood with Pakistan, are the question asked everywhere. The answer is: No. China is already way ahead of India. That is a fact.

But India has one advantage that China might never enjoy: The freedom of its masses: The democratic circus called the Parliament, where sometimes, the Nation is governed and the Punditry of the Intelligensia who spare no corner of any Newspaper to pontificate on how Hindu nationalism is the same as Nazism, how India is sinking into chaos while the BJP is at power and other apocalyptic predictions, the right to be whatever one wants to be- a political Swamyji or a Vagrant charging foreign tourists money for camera poses and to sleep wherever one feels the need to siesta without botheration about the fact that bed-to-be is the pavement amidst the busiest Hightway of Mumbai or under cool shades of the Chennai High Court. .. nah, one can go on and on singing eulogies of the freedom we enjoy in India.

In China on the other hand, you get thrown into prison for writing critical Blog articles like 'Stainless Steel Mouse' and other were arrested. OK, they were released, for the International hue and cry over their 'internship' was enormous, thanks to some Chinese Volunteers who helped publisise the fact of their arrests.

But, wait. They released three of four such 'blogging Critics' but CHINA did something that should be hailed as the Hallmark of Communist repression: They arrested the people who first organised online petitions for Liu Di(Stainless steel mouse)!!!
Thus the Chinese Communist Party have given out the message that dissidents won't be tolerated, but the supporters of the dissidents will be eradicated. Nice.

Robert Bernstein writes in Washington Post on China's Secrecy Syndrome. Take a read!

China, the last big totalitarian government, is brutalizing its own people. It limits and distorts information, keeping them ignorant on many critical subjects, and gives harsh prison terms to those who publish information the government would rather have suppressed. Liu Qing, president of Human Rights in China, is in exile in New York. He receives news out of China, in particular about individual cases of those in trouble, and is in charge of the editorial content of news and information reaching into China over the Internet. Liu himself has served 12 years in prison.