Thomas Friedman on Autocracy

Here's Thomas Friedman, prominent author and NY Times columnist, saying nice things about autocracy:

There's only one thing worse, in my view, than one-party autocracy -- the Chinese system -- and that's one-party Democracy. Okay? See, one-party autocracy, at least if it has some vision of the future, can actually order the right things . . . collective action from the top down. But when you have one-party Democracy, that is, you have one party trying to do things and the other sticking a spoke in its wheels constantly, you can't get anything big done. And that to me seems to be our real dilemma today.

You may remember this picture:


That's the Goddess of Democracy statue which played a part in the Tianamen Square protests in 1989, protests which were soon crushed by the autocracy.

Does Friedman think he would be allowed to write freely under the Chinese system?

Friedman would soon be unfreed
due to compelling State need.