However repugnant those policies appear to outsiders there are no surprises there.
China is a totalitarian state controlled by one party - the Communist Party.
What is surprising - and disheartening - is a decision by the US Supreme Court in Florence v County of Burlington.
Albert Florence, a finance executive, was a passenger in his BMW when his wife was stopped for speeding.
He was arrested on an old warrant for a fine, which - as it happens - he had already paid.
He was taken to jail and strip searched twice.
In response, Mr Florence sued - hence the case before the Supreme Court.
The court in a factious 5-4 decision ruled that such searches may now be conducted on anyone arrested and jailed for the most minor of offences.
The majority argued that concern for security of correctional institutions trumps the privacy rights and dignity of individuals.
I thought about those events and Terry's column as I watched the brilliant teaching of Professor Michael Sandel of Harvard.
Professor Sandel teaches a course on moral and political philosophy entitled Justice; what's the right thing to do?. The course is broadcast Thursday evenings on TVNZ7.
Professor Sandel's course demonstrates how, across the political divide from conservative theorists like Edmund Burke or Milton Friedman to liberals like Benjamin Franklin or Paul Krugman, there is agreement on one major cornerstone of democracy.
That government, relying for legitimacy upon consent of the governed, rests in turn upon respect for the individual citizen's dignity and integrity.
Implicit is the right of persons to have ownership of their bodies.
Almost all the rights and indeed the responsibilities we associate with citizenship and of economic freedom in democracies take origin from that fundamental principle of autonomy, of the ownership of one's body free from interference by the State or others, so long as we do nothing to restrict others from exercising their similar right of ownership.
By contrast, in a totalitarian state like China or Nazi Germany the individual is subservient to the state in every way, including the vital decisions of reproduction.
Democracies operate on the basis of principles and institutions designed to protect and respect the individual, not on the basis of some invidious distinction of economic status, or skin colour, or religion but in the simple dignity of being a person, with unique inalienable rights.
That is why the US Court's decision is so troubling. And why Terry's column is so on point.
Coercive intrusion on one body endangers the body of us all.
We need, locally, to be reminded that the humbug of facile intrusive solutions to serious social problems may lead down a very dark road.
In America, democracy, itself, is in danger of corrosion.
It was Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the US constitution who said, he who would sacrifice liberty for security, will deserve neither and lose both.
