Has always been an idiot. He is, however, a good barometer for a certain kind of conventional wisdom. I like to think of him as a man who translates what DC thinks into tortured and folksy prose.

Based on my reading of his NYT op-ed piece and listening to his recent TV and radio interviews, I think Friedman is saying that China's stability-obsessed rulers should start doing meaningful things now---while China's economy is doing relatively well and, as a result, they have some legitimacy in the eyes of many of the ruled---to anticipate the day when Chinese people tire of material pursuits and before they get fed up with chronic government corruption and abuse. The best time to listen to the grassroots and oversee big changes is before the country becomes unstable, before people take to the streets en masse and lose their fear of the rulers. Mubarak and other former Arab leaders had decades to do these things, but wasted their political capital on padding their bank accounts and intimidating their citizenry instead of helping prepare their nations for modernity and global respectability. China's last imperial dynasty, the Qing, made similar mistakes in the 1800s. By the time it listened to the grassroots and implemented real reforms, it was too late and the Qing dynasty quickly collapsed. And China was left in far worse shape than it had been when the Qing rulers took power 300 years earlier. "Do you see what I mean, sir?"

Inequality is not inherently destabilizing; it becomes so when people come to believe that structural factors inhibit the possibility, however slight, of their own social mobility. This is why America is a nation of "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" rather than a Marxist war zone. My impression, which is admittedly hardly a reliable indicator, is that typical Chinese citizens are enthralled by the speed of economic growth, and generally believe that either they, or their children, which means more in China than it does in America, stand to benefit personally from the ongoing inegalitarian boom.

Chinese planners aren't perfect, and they lack many the democratic feedback mechanisms that promote governmental legitimacy in the west, but they know a hell of a lot more about China than Friedman does. Ongoing reforms to the hukou system, a major factor too infrequently mentioned in the west (and one I doubt Friedman's heard of), are going to take a lot of the edge off potential popular discontent. Whatever their failings, the Chinese planners do know very well what their aims are, and they pursue those aims with more tenacity than is generally acknowledged.

Good point regarding the perception of one's social mobility.

In all honesty, the West does expect progress too quickly because serious social reforms take at least a generation to take hold. But we should expect some progress.

If I were dirt poor and had little rights, I'd probably opt for money first for self-sustainability and rights second (keeping with Maslow's hierarchy of needs). I hope we'll see that pattern as China grows richer. Last generation was about economic growth. This generation will continue the economic growth and start the rights growth? Hukou reform is good place to start.

I think the point is that Freidman underestimates what exactly would be involved in the policy prescription he is making. Plus he does not understand Chinese History.

The Chinese tried democracy in the early 20th century after the Qing dynasty fell. It failed, and the fallout from that event led to the partition of the country by warlords, mass deaths through war and famine, foreign invasion, etc.

Opening China up to democracy while avoiding this type of chaos would be difficult, and there is no easy answer.

Friedman does not seem to appreciate any of this, the culture, the history, etc.

And yes Friedman does not understand China outside of the tier one cites.

And yes, freedom is better than oppression, but it will take a difficult road before China can face democracy without the good possibility of disintegration of the country and the attendant disasters it brings.

Pardon the spot of cutting and pasting below, but the following is from MSNBC dated 16 June 2011. The Hukou system is specifically mentioned.

"China Social Unrest Getting Out of Control: Expert"

Published: Thursday, 16 Jun 2011 | 12:31 AM ET
Text Size By: Deepanshu Bagchee
Supervising Digital Editor, CNBC Asia

"China's security services have managed for now to curb social unrest in the southern manufacturing city of Zengcheng after migrant workers set fire to government buildings over the weekend. But one economist says the discord is more worrying for markets than the nation’s widely-telegraphed soaring inflation.

(Str | AFP | Getty Images
Armed riot police gathering along a street in Zengcheng, China.)

'I think that any amount of cracking down is going to be a little bit like in Syria,' Enzio Von Pfeil, CEO of the Economic Time Bond Fund told CNBC on Thursday. 'You've put out the flame in one section of the kitchen but then another flame erupts in another section of the kitchen.'

"The latest protests were sparked after a pregnant woman was reportedly pushed to the ground by security guards who tried to remove her food stall in Zengcheng, located in Guangdong province.

'Normally [this] would not give rise to the scale of violence that we have witnessed,' Von Pfeil said in emailed notes.

"He added that unresolved problems such as endemic corruption and the lack of rule of law were heightening concerns over rising prices, bringing things to a head.

"Von Pfeil, who previously worked for firms such as ABN Amro, Clarion Capitol and S.G. Warburg, said the unrest was snowballing because of coverage over the internet.

'People are seeing people riot in one little city so they decide to go and riot in their own cities,' he said.

"Unhappy Rural Migrants Threaten China Stability"

"Von Pfeil believes the problems are also aggravated by the household registration system, known as Hukou, which provides social benefits only to registered residents of a city and discriminates against migrant workers. 'People are getting caught between having migrated to a new job, not getting the job, and then not having the social benefits'."

*******************************

I would add to this news article that the Hukou system needs abolishing, not reform. Having to register with the national government for its approval before you can relocate your residence and get a better job is the requirement of authoritarians; it is an onerous mandate that is enforced by police, to include armed riot police. It's not only migrant workers who are affected by the Hukou system, as even rising middle class families in the PRC have to obey Hukou or else. This lack of socioeconomic mobility is mandated by a self-limiting national elite which has only its own selfish interest as their sole purpose.

Whose government and what character of government could create and enforce such a system? And who would defend it?

*Freidman

*Friedman

Mao and everything he said, did and wildly advocated is dead, entombed, as are the principles of Deng Xiao Peng. The CCP in Beijing threw out Lao Tzu shortly after they ditched the "Mandate of Heaven," which itself anyway is historical romanticism. Quoting Mao these days and times is akin to quoting Marx, himself a mid-19th century European (Jewish) eccentric who had nothing in common with the Chinese. Nothing either Mao or Marx had to say holds today in the CCP-PRC and its oppressive State-Corporate-Military complex.

What did Mao or Marx have to say about cyberhacking or cyberwarfare? The internet?

For censorship and dictatorship of the elites, by the oligarchs, for the kleptocrats, you most recently have to go to Lenin. Lenin is more alive in the CCP-PRC than Mao and Marx together - and while you're at it scratch Engles as another no-show. If you take a flashlight into the shadows of the CCP you'll likely be able to get a glimpse of Hitler too.

Friedman's ego and pontificating is dwarfed by the false universalist view of the Chinese who believe that only they and their elites come from stars. To the Chinese the world is indeed round and all of it belongs to the Middle Kingdom, lock, stock and barrell. None the less, I especially like the two pages in my passport that quote Harry Emerson Fosdick, "Democracy is based on the conviction that there extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people."

The Chinese represent nothing aspirational, provide no new plateaus of human development such as in the concept and practice of human rights; the contemporary Chinese are the most reactionary force on the planet.