This choice of an alien heroism was the result of a heightened interest, characteristic for Xenophon’s time, in the Orient – Eastern culture, ideology and sociopolitical forms. A light was expected from the East. Cultural interanimation, interaction of ideologies and languages had already begun. Also characteristic was the idealization of the oriental despot, and here one senses Xenophon’s own contemporary reality with its idea (shared widely by his contemporaries) of renovating Greek political forms in a spirit close to oriental autocracy. 

That is Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, writing in the Dialogic Imagination (p. 54). Next time you read Tom Friedman in the Times and feel a little envy over supposed autocratic efficiency in Beijing remember that the world has seen this before. May be that will help you relax a bit, and put things in perspective.