One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.Ask the Uighurs of Western China or the Tibetans just how "enlightened" the Chinese autocracy is. Neither believes what China imposes is moving them forward, quite the contrary.
This column is more of the thoroughly discredited "Mussolini made the Italian trains run on time" apologetics. It should be sufficient to earn Friedman a pink slip, if the Times had any backbone, something I fear they do not have.
