Paulson: Hot on India, cool on China

[Deja Q]

http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/26/magazines/fortune/easton_treasury.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007102612

WASHINGTON (Fortune) -- On Tuesday morning, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave a speech on China. It was called "Managing Complexity and Establishing New Habits of Cooperation" - a title that a therapist might borrow for a parents' lecture on coping with defiant adolescents.

On Wednesday morning, Paulson gave a speech on India. The title practically blushed with fresh love: "The Economic Power and Promise of India." This afternoon, the veteran China hand goes wheels up for his first trip as Treasury Secretary to India, where he will speak to Fortune's Global Forum, peddle private financiers on the idea of investing in infrastructure projects and promote plans for an international financial center in Mumbai.

Let's hope he has better luck with this relationship.

Paulson, who had traveled to China more than 70 times during his long career at Goldman Sachs (Charts, Fortune 500), began his tenure with high hopes that he would help Washington link economic elbows with Beijing - a sentiment embodied in the launch of his biannual Strategic Economic Dialogue, aimed at guiding China toward becoming a "responsible stakeholder" in the global economy.

In other words, "We tried this idea, it failed, so let's try it again - only elsewhere."