No I won’t stop mocking Tom Friedman, so stop asking. Recap: He thinks that if we could only be China for one day — just one! – we’d have all the optimal policies we could handle. He even fantasizes about this in his spare time.

So here’s the latest for the Friedman file, the Three Gorges Dam, pushed through without any of the messy democratic constraints Friedman disdains, is coming apart. From the Telegraph:

Like many such megaprojects, the Three Gorges was always driven as much by politics as by economics. Its rationale covered irrigation and flood control in the lower Yangtse plain, hydroelectric power generation, which sounds sensible: but objections were bulldozed in the tense political atmosphere of the late 1980s, when the final decisions were made. The dam was the pet project of then prime minister Li Peng, who was involved in the party split which led to the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, in which he was the triumphant prime mover. In this context he was not going to back down on the dam, and the debate was closed down.
So the construction was forced through without even what passes in China for proper debate. The number of local people who had to be relocated came to 1.4 million – equivalent to the obliteration of Birmingham. Now it looks like another 300,000 will have to be shifted – add Coventry to that. This, in China, means getting a few weeks’ notice to quit and putting up with wherever the authorities see fit to put you. On top of that a large number of historic sites from one of the most ancient cradles of Chinese civilisation had to go. Yes, China has vast numbers of people to feed and cannot afford sentimentality, but perhaps a bit more care might have been taken to ensure that the costs and benefits had been properly calculated.
But even three years ago, with Li Peng and his family safely out of the way, official Chinese sources were admitting that things had gone horribly wrong. In the official media references were made to landslides, ecological deterioration and accumulation of algae. The Chinese aren’t unworldly and irresponsible greenies. When they point things like this out it’s because it’s causing real damage. Of course the authorities are careful not to promote mass panic, but so far the incidents are far enough apart to prevent collective protest; local complaints can still be suppressed without too much trouble.

Amazing! It turns out that “politics” worked its way even into the meritocratic, technocratic, palaces of the supergenius, phrenologist’s-caliper-busting Mandarins of China’s one-party authoritarian state. That’s un-possible! Right, Tom? Maybe he should switch to “North Korea for a Day,” because the Norks get everything right. Or maybe “Iran for a Day”?