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    • Neptium
      link
      211 months ago

      I can explain this actually.

      Deng did take inspiration and learn from the so-called Asian tigers.

      But these economies, especially Singapore, are very different to China.

      Superficially it may seem similar, especially in SEZs and Hong Kong, whereby both Singapore and the SEZs/Hong Kong exhibit characteristics of a free market, low taxes and basically higher exploitation of labour.

      Singapore started as a trade colony and success came from trade. It was never really truly was a productive economy, although currently does invest and is part of the global value chain for electronics. However, financial services was and continue to dominate it’s economy.

      SOEs are also prevalent in Singapore, which the World Bank always tries downplaying, but unlike China, Singapore’s population has been effectively urban from the start.

      The great thing about China’s economy is the collectivised rural sector, throughout it’s existence and even after reform and opening up, played a critical role in absorbing internal and external shocks to the economy. This allowed for consistent double digit growth and allowed them to continue to let their economy grow even when external factors where unfavourable (ie. Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, Atlantic Financial Crisis of 2008). Not to mention that although SOEs in China took a backseat during the 2000s, the “commanding heights” of the economy, and critical infrastructures continues to be publicly owned.

      Singapore’s success came from literally being a Tax Haven for all international companies to dodge taxes in SEA economies. It’s economy is fully integrated into the world economy, which also explains its very Western-friendly foreign policy (relative to rest of ASEAN except Phillipines).

      So a country with 1.4billion people really can’t emulate the economy of an island state literally 0.0001x its population.