I wrote in September about what I identified as Tom Friedman’s Strange Call on China. I was reporting that the “NY Times” hadn’t printed a letter I’d written in response to one of Friedman’s columns – Our One-Party Democracy – and so wanted to share the column and response. Funny thing: They did print my letter. It’s been my experience in the past on several occasions that they’ll contact you, but they didn’t on this one, so I missed it. To make a long story short, here is the letter as printed by the Gray Lady. To save you a couple of keystrokes, this is what I said:
One party of autocrats
Thomas Friedman (One-party democracy,” Views, Sept.10) writes ”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.” This statement is, to be kind, scandalous. China is a police state. China’s leaders have brutally repressed the populations of Tibet and East Turkestan for many decades. The Chinese leadership strongly supports regimes in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea that have consistently ravaged their own people. China is itself corrupt. Nearly unabated air and water pollution devastates the health of the Chinese people.
Mr. Friedman’s argument for the ”enlightened” nature of the Chinese leadership hinges on its embrace of renewable energy technology. It should be noted, however, that China continues to build scores of new coal-fired power plants annually, while the nation is in a headlong rush to put hundreds of thousands of new cars on its new roads. And, for my money, its rush to nuclear power does not in the least indicate the requisite thoughtfulness and attention to environmental protection that would allow its leadership to be called enlightened.