International Law

The Lexus and the Loony

By Stan

I don’t think Thomas Friedman understands how governance in China works. What a shock.

From his Meet the Press appearance yesterday:

MR. BROKAW: You have an intriguing proposition in this book. You’d like to be China for a day, just one day.

MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, it comes from actually a dialogue I had with Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, and Jeff was making the point that, you know, really almost out of exasperation of a company that’s been trying to be an energy innovative leader, saying, "Look, Tom, we need is"–what Jeff said is we need a president who’s going to set the right price for carbon. Set the right standard, set the right regulation. Shape the market so it will be innovative. Everyone will kind of whine and moan for a month and then the whole ecosystem will take off. And I thought about that afterwards and I said to him, "You know, Jeff, what you’re really saying is, `If only we could be China for a day. Just one day.’" So I wrote a chapter called "China for a day, but not for two." Really, about what we would do if for one day we could impose, cut through all the lobbyists, all the amendments, all the earmarks, and actually impose the right conditions to get our market to take off.

I don’t think I’ll be running out to buy his new book just yet.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on September 08, 2008 (boomark / email).