I was so struck by this statement in the Wall Street Journal that I had to read it three times. The late Zhao Ziyang, a former Secretary General of China’s Communist Party who sacrificed his career based on his opposition to the government’s heavy-handed handling of the Tiananmen Square protestors, said in his soon-to-be-published memoirs:

“If  a country wishes to modernize, not only should it implement a market economy, it must also adopt a parliamentary democracy as its political system.”

Wow. It’s a wonderful testimony that by being intellectually honest and willing to confront the statist propaganda with which he was raised,  Zhao came to understand the power of free people and free markets.  Those are principles all of us in the private and public sectors should never allow ourselves to forget, even–especially, perhaps–when growth stalls.