Should the US Learn from China?

Thomas Friedman hits the US hard today for missing out on the last seven years, while China has passed us by on so many levels:

As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.

The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.

Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?

Now, faulting the US for its shortcomings, and finding China so impressive, is easy, because on the surface the comparison really does seem stark. China's come a long way quickly, whereas we've obviously lost some relative distance.

But dig a little deeper, and the comparison rapidly becomes less useful.