What is autocracy?

An addition to my "theatre of the absurd" section:
"A leadership transition is scheduled in two major autocracies in 2012. Neither is likely to be a surprise. Xi Jinping is set to replace Hu Jintao as President in China, and, in Russia, Vladimir Putin has announced that he will reclaim the presidency from Dmitri Medvedev. Among the world’s democracies, political outcomes this year are less predictable. Nicolas Sarkozy faces a difficult presidential re-election campaign in France, as does Barack Obama in the United States."

You may say whatever you want about China and Russia, but neither of them is an autocracy. I added to my glossary the Wikipedia definition:
"An autocracy is a system of government in which supreme political power to direct all the activities of the state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of coup d'état or mass insurrection)."

I am not sure what the author of the "Project Syndicate" article thought when calling China and Russia "autocracies": China is not an authocracy simply because the power is no concentrated in the hands of one person - it is shared by a group of individuals, who even take care to rotate between the leading government positions - something that the quoted author points out himself.

Russia is not authocratic either. This may strike you as being contrary of the commongly held wisdom that the power is concentrated in the hands of Putin - there is however little to substantiate this claim, except the private opinions expressed in the media and by politicians. Putin has taken great care to abide by the Russian constitution, which is modeled on the American one.

Indeed, he has the support of the majority of the parliament and there are no other politicians who could compete with him in popularity among Russians - but isn't this the situation that existed in the United States just a few years ago, after 2008 election? Then President Obama won the presidency by a landslide, and the Democratic party held majority in the Congress and a filibuster proof 60-place majority in the Senate?

Indeed, Putin is planning to return to the presidency... which is, if he wins the next election. But does it make him different from Franklin D. Roosevelt who won the presidency four times in a row (American constitution then allowed it). Would anyone call the United States of 1933-1945 and authocracy?! 

Finally, what is really bothering - is the blurring of the lines between the countries with struggling democracy, such as Russia; undemocratic but not truly totalitarian countries, such as China; and the true totalitarian authocracies, such as Cuba, North Korea and Syria, as well as the autocratic monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates. Ironically, the true authocracies weren't even mentioned in the article.