The appeal of autocracy to intellectuals

Joel Kotkin is bang on the money here:

China’s ascendency appeals to many in America’s intellectual classes, and not only them, who historically have a soft spot for “enlightened” autocrats and overweening bureaucracies. In the progressive era, the lodestone was imperial Germany, in the 1930s for many the “future” was to be seen in the Soviet Union and even fascist Italy. In the 1980s, Japan emerged as the role model, followed in the late 1990s by a united Europe that seemed to many more humane and successful than the U.S.

The reality is that, for all its many flaws and failings, the US system based on liberal capitalism is more robust, responsive and successful than the Utopian "Man in Whitehall Knows Better" systems beloved of the centrist and progressive left - especially the acedemic and intellectual bits of it.

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