Bowing to the Chinese Century?

Thomas Friedman, yesterday, in this Times column, found his rhetorical flourish yet lost his practical sensibility. In a fairly particularly common theme for him, Friedman praises the autocratic, oppressive Chinese government as efficient and resourceful, while decrying “our poll-driven, toxically partisan, cable-TV-addicted, money-corrupted political class”. Friedman goes on further to suggest that politics today in the US is nothing more than politicians doing what is right “for their ideological wing or whoever comes with the biggest bag of money”. In contrast, Friedman describes the Chinese government as a machine “generat[ing] the kind of focus, legitimacy, unity and stick-to-it-iveness to do big things”, with “regular rotations of power at the top and a strong record of promoting on merit.”
While there is much to be said about China’s impressive economic growth and future-oriented plans in energy and infrastructure, there are a myriad of problems of scratching right at the surface. Perhaps Mr. Friedman should write his next piece after getting off a public bus in a middle-sized, smog filled city with “zai”, or demolish, signs written on every wall. Or perhaps he could visit the one of the 80,000 massive protests each year, a number that continues to climb fast as bureaucrats who control government industries are fattened while college graduates fail to find work without parents’ connections and farmers lose land in the addictive sprawl and urbanization. Instead of seeing Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as a man with “detailed plans for his people’s betterment”, perhaps its time see him a father enabling his corrupt son to peddle connections and raise over US$1 Billion for his own private equity fund.
It is undeniable that our current government is paralyzed by the constant election cycle, narrow interests of individual representatives, and unwillingness to compromise. Yet, to think that an inefficient government will crush the American entrepreneurial spirit is outrageous. While there are significant structural obstacles in the next century, namely an exploding deficit because of entitlement obligations, American innovation is not stopping. In comparison, China’s Golden Shield Project, dubbed the “Great Firewall of China”, has severely restricted the ability for companies and individuals to innovate and expand. China may very well be able to copy and pirate foreign inventions, yet in society that allows companies to pay internet service providers to block content of competitors, it is hard to imagine how China will be launching the next innovations for the 21^st Century.
Friedman does end his column with comment from Orville Schell of the Asia Society, a China-watcher, which injects some reason. Schell says, “I don’t idealize china’s system of government. I don’t want to live in an authoritarian system. But I do feel compelled to look at China in an objective and acknowledge the successes of this system.” There is nothing wrong with this vision, but it may be time to tone down our idealism of even China’s economic success. The structural and cultural challenges facing China are even more expansive than ours. Instead of enabling a corrupt, insular Chinese government and criticizing our democratic process, its time to see that all is not what it may seem in China.
Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons, by the World Economic Forum