Tusk, tusk.

I have a love-hate relationship with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman. He is clearly intelligent, he has a talent for simplifying extremely complex issues, and he's in contention with Wilford Brimley for the 2007 Most Walrus-like Public Figure Award. But Friedman's knack for simplification is also his most annoying quality. He has a nasty habit of learning just enough about an issue to be dangerous, coming up with a catchy theme to encapsulate the topic at hand (See The World is Flat), and publishing works which purport to teach more than they actually do. As a consequence, his readers walk around thinking they know a lot about globalization, for instance, when in fact they have just seen the tip of the iceberg. And as Molly Brown learned one evening on the Titanic, the stuff below the water line can be pretty important.

Friedman's latest column is a typical example. In it, Friedman proposes that China should deal with its environmental problems by allowing more free speech, such that environmental activists will nag naughty companies, and the naughty companies will reform. In Friedman's model, China would set up "free speech" zones that are akin to the old "special economic zones," whereby dissidents could call attention to those companies most responsible for China's pollution problems, and that way the air will clean up without the government having to issue any edicts. According to Friedman, it's a simple matter of mimicking China's migration from communism to "socialism with Chinese characteristics" (a.k.a. capitalism): you define a limited set of rules by which enterprising young citizens can pursue their dreams, and those enterprising young citizens will take care of the rest. But once again, Friedman has scraped about an inch of dirt off of a hilltop without realizing he's digging up an old landfill.

China's economic revolution allowed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to maintain authoritarian control, despite a de facto abandonment of Marxist/Leninist/Maoist ideology. The CCP set up special rules for people to start companies, special economic zones in which those companies could locate their facilities, and allowed foreign companies to provide investment capital and profit from the ensuing growth. But here's the catch: China's economic miracle happened precisely because the government could take credit for its success; the modernization of China occurred because Chinese citizens could build up businesses, improve the lot of the nation, and do so without criticizing the government. In Friedman's model, however, the government would have to relax its grip on a core lever of social control, one that they're pretty touchy about, and allow speech concerning an issue that was in large part caused by the very government he seeks to commend in his column. In other words, Friedman's picture once again looks pretty good from afar, but far from good up close.

Clearly, China has a pollution problem--I feel it every day when I walk outside of our apartment. But allowing people to talk about the environmental issues in China would require allowing people to talk about the CCP's role in burning my lungs. And that mess is inextricably tied up with China's economic miracle, which is itself the foundation for the legitimacy of the CCP's claim to power. So why would the CCP ever allow the Chinese to talk about the environment?

Well, it wouldn't. And that is why Wilford Brimley will win the 2007 Most Walrus-like Figure Award.