Which is the better model for social development - "democratic India" or one-party Chinese rule? I am skeptical of the sort of thinking that Thomas Friedman here embraces: a sort of economic determinism - growth requires democracy. What about India? I don't see the kind of manual labor in China that is common in India.Thomas Friedman, NY Times, October 2010 :
"The Norwegian committee just awarded its 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Chinese pro-democracy activist. The message to Beijing, I’d argue, was simple: Liberty is a value in and of itself, because without it human beings can never develop their full potential. And, therefore, liberty is also an essential ingredient for any society that wants to thrive in the 21st century. Otherwise, it can’t develop its full potential.
China has thrived since Deng Xiaoping by offering its people economic freedom without political freedom. And surely one of the most intriguing political science questions in the world today is: Can China continue to prosper, while censoring the Internet, controlling its news media and insisting on a monopoly of political power by the Chinese Communist Party?I don’t think so."
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