Just to add to Kathryn’s Tom Friedman is a Liberal Fascist link-fest over in Media Blog, the crux of Friedman’s argument lies on the assumption that the Chinese government knows what it’s doing (80,000 dead and 7,000 government-built schools that collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake might be evidence to the contrary, however)
As we’ve posted before here on Planet Gore, China’s rush to alternative fuels might not be all that Friedman thinks it is. Or, at least that’s what I read in the New York Times:
Some top Chinese regulators even worry that Beijing’s mandates are pushing companies too far too fast. The companies may be deliberately underbidding for the right to build new projects and then planning to go back to the government later and demand compensation once the projects lose money.
“The problem is we have so many stupid enterprises,” said Li Junfeng, who is the deputy director general for energy research at China’s top economic planning agency and the secretary general of the government-run Renewable Energy Industries Association.