Don’t you wonder why it took this long?

To look so seriously at China?

The opening of the Beijing Olympics in eight days’ time will, as always planned, attest to China’s spectacular material progress since Deng Xiaoping launched market-led economic reform exactly 30 years ago…

But, unwittingly, the Olympics also reflect the downside of China’s hectic growth story and contain reminders of the nature of the regime that presides over the world’s last big communist state.

Why did the world need to be reminded? There’s been plenty of evidence for a long time.