From The Editor Archives

One doesn’t have to be a left-wing activist to recognize that these are challenging times for Asia’s poor, many of whom are struggling with increases in the prices of food and energy. The tragedy is that while governments give plenty of lip service to helping the poor, this is largely a crisis of their making, and the attempts to ameliorate have only made it worse, imperiling social stability.

Poor international Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge. On April 25, he dropped all pretense that the Olympics are not political by hectoring the West not to hector China to honor its Olympic promises because “You don’t obtain anything in China with a loud voice.” The very same day, the Beijing regime bowed to international pressure to open talks with the Dalai Lama.

Over the last few months, you have no doubt perused our Web site for free content, www.feer.com/forum, a summary of which is found on page six. Well, that was just an amuse-bouche; get ready for the full banquet.

Are conflicts more easily avoided in an environment of clarity or obscurity? On the one hand, in Indonesia the forces of radical Islam are benefiting from the lack of a media spotlight revealing their true intentions. As Sadanand Dhume writes in this issue, the rapidly growing Justice and Prosperity Party traces its roots back to Egypts Muslim Brotherhood, which also spawned groups like Al Qaeda and Hamas.

  Hegel once said, and Marxists who use his dialectical system often repeat, "quantity becomes quality." How ironic (or perhaps it is the result of Hegelian synthesis?) that today it is the capitalists for whom this phrase seems most apposite. For 2007 was the year when flows of international finance into China and India reached a critical mass, and the government barriers to integration of their corporate sectors with international management came tumbling down.

By happenstance, Asia is witnessing several hotly contested or controversial elections. Australia has a new prime minister already, and in Hong Kong shortly before we went to press, Anson Chan defeated Regina Ip in a closely watched Legislative Council by-election that served as a referendum on democratic reform. More polls are to come in Thailand, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan and possibly Malaysia.

As Pakistan prepares for a return to democracy after eight years of military rule, the attempted assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in Karachi is a stark reminder of what's at stake. While domestic politics have always been chaotic, the bright spot has long been the failure of radical Islam to gain a significant following among the populace. But the use of a suicide bomber, and the horrific death toll, is just one sign that this may be beginning to change.

The great and the good were in Dalian this past month for the summer session of the World Economic Forum, usually a pretty staid affair. But when journalists criticized Beijing for being a "free loader" on the international system and failing to exercise soft power, they evidently hit a nerve. China's United Nations Undersecretary-General Sha Zukang fired back angrily.

In his recent book China Shakes the World, Financial Times reporter James Kynge noted that he experienced a sea change in his work as Beijing bureau chief–instead of world news influencing China all the time, events within China began to have implications for people elsewhere. When Beijing goes on an infrastructure spending spree, the world's scrap metal prices shoot up, and thieves start stealing manhole covers all over the world. In some ways the last couple months have been a return to the old paradigm.

As Indonesia goes, so goes the region. No other country is so pivotal today to the future of East Asia, not even China.  That's because its massive Muslim population is steadily tilting away from its moderate roots and toward fundamentalist strains of the religion.