Brooks is confusing collectivism with dictatorship, and they're not related. You can have a collectivist democracy, like Japan, or an individualist dictatorship

Brooks is confusing collectivism with dictatorship, and they're not related. You can have a collectivist democracy, like Japan, or an individualist dictatorship, like Saddam's Iraq or Nazi Germany. China's recent economic improvements have nothing to do with its collectivism. They're due to more freedom, both economic and personal, for its citizens. Taiwan, whose people are arguably very similar to the Chinese in cultural outlook, started prospering as they emerged from martial law under the Kuomintang to democracy. Hopefully China will follow the same path as Taiwan and South Korea in this respect. I get the sense that Brooks wants to prove that dictatorships are just as morally legitimate as democracies, and that the people of Asia (or the Middle East, or wherever) are somehow culturally programmed to thrive under a dictatorship. He's got it backwards -- the people thrive not because of the dictatorship, but in spite of it. Once they're freed, they'll thrive all the more.