Modern China: More Reagan, Less Mao? January 28, 2011

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2011/01/10/Thomas_Friedman_on_America_and_China

Thomas Friedman explains that despite accusations, he does not support China's one-party autocracy - though he does respect its embrace of Reaganism and capitalism. "What we envy is not their forced labor, the hard labor of their political prisoners," says Friedman, "but the harder labor of people just trying to build a different future."

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As the balance of energy, innovation, trade, wealth, power and influence continues to rapidly shift throughout the world, China and the US are finding themselves forced to confront a difficult process of constant adjustment. At the same time, much of what we have grown accustomed to when thinking about our own country and China over the past century is called into question.

We will not only find ourselves needing to recalibrate how we look at and treat each other, but how we look at our own political and economic systems. In short, more than at any time in our living memory, this reformatting of our relationship with China will require us to be better informed about what is going on in China, more politically astute about the strengths and weaknesses of each system and ever more diplomatically flexible about how we deal with each other.

The enormity of this challenge and the suddenness with which it has come upon us, is the subject of this "on-stage conversation" between New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and long-time China writer and Arthur Ross Director of the Asia Society's Center on US-China Relations, Orville Schell. - Asia Society

Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Friedman was bureau chief for The Ne York Times in Beirut and Jerusalem before writing, From Beirut to Jerusalem, which won the National Book Award for non-fiction. His book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree won the 2000 Overseas Press Club award for best nonfiction book on foreign policy.

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, won the inaugural Goldman Sachs/Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. His latest book is Hot, Flat and Crowded. He has a B.A. in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University and a Master of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East studies from Oxford.