Lifting 100 millions people out of poverty is totally different from lifting 1 millions people out of poverty. Moving a car involves much more engineering than moving a carpet.
If they haven't done great leap forward and cultural revolution it would be better, that is true. But by "abandoning all communist policies and began liberalizing markets", not all countries see economic success, ukraine, iraq and all recent "liberated" countries, and russian living quality in 90s was even worse than their late 80s.
And ironically enough, the fast developing era of taiwan, south korea, by today's standard, are not under any form of democracy.
> And ironically enough, the fast developing era of taiwan, south korea, by today's standard, are not under any form of democracy.
This is I think an under-appreciated point... Taiwan and SK both made the most economic gains under military dictatorships. Social liberalization followed economic growth.
Something similar might have happened in Singapore, they're technically a democracy but have been governed by the PAP forever and don't really subscribe to freedom of press in the way the US does (but have their own ways of building accountability).
All very fascinating stuff. 10 years ago I would have said that China would follow the same path but in that case social liberalization still hasn't come yet. Certainly the GDP per capita has not yet caught up but the PPP was pretty close last I checked.
If they haven't done great leap forward and cultural revolution it would be better, that is true. But by "abandoning all communist policies and began liberalizing markets", not all countries see economic success, ukraine, iraq and all recent "liberated" countries, and russian living quality in 90s was even worse than their late 80s.
And ironically enough, the fast developing era of taiwan, south korea, by today's standard, are not under any form of democracy.