Government: Too Many Hamburgers?

Orville Schell of the Asia Society, one of America's best China watchers, who was with me in Tianjin, put it perfectly: Because we have recently begun to find ourselves so unable to get things done, we tend to look with a certain overidealistic yearning when it comes to China. We see what they have done and project onto them something we miss, fearfully miss, in ourselves — that can-do, get-it-done, everyone-pull-together, whatever-it-takes attitude that built our highways, dams and put a man on the moon.

These were hallmarks of our childhood culture, said Schell. But now we view our country turning into the opposite, even as we see China becoming animated by these same kinds of energies. 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 way and acknowledge the successes of this system. That doesn't mean advocating that we become like China. It means being alive to the challenge we are up against and even finding ways to cooperate with China. The very retro notion that we are undisputedly still No. 1, added Schell, is extremely dangerous.

For more, see Too Many Hamburgers? by Thomas L. Friedman, September 21, 2010 at The New York Times.