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China today reminds me of Taiwan when I lived there in the late 1980s when the government was still trying to be dictatorial but just couldn’t get away with it. It was no longer scary enough.
Back then, the smartest of the Taiwan apparatchiks, like a young Harvard-educated party official named Ma Ying-jeou, glimpsed the future and began to reinvent themselves as democratic politicians. The epilogue: Mr. Ma took office this week as the newly elected president of a democratic Taiwan.
-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times
Back then, the smartest of the Taiwan apparatchiks, like a young Harvard-educated party official named Ma Ying-jeou, glimpsed the future and began to reinvent themselves as democratic politicians. The epilogue: Mr. Ma took office this week as the newly elected president of a democratic Taiwan.
-- Nicholas D. Kristof for The New York Times
