>>>And how are countries to get the hard currency to buy the
>>>western-made capital goods that embody so much technology?
>>
>>That's not the most urgent priority for a low-income country, which
>>needs to feed and house people and teach them to read. A lot of
>>hard currency debt is just a millstone, and the compulsion to earn
>>dollars and euros is a distraction from a lot of humanly urgent
>>tasks.
>>
>>If the model worked, why are debt burdens still so high, and income
>>gaps (aside from China and a few other Asian countries) wider than
>>ever?
>
>China is a *really* *big* aside... India is becoming an "aside" too...
But China didn't obey any of the World Bank's rules. The state still controls lots of the economy, the financial system is repressed, and foreign trade and investment restricted. It has a lot more in the East Asian developmental states than anything the WB would approve of. Of what relevance is China as a model to Kenya or Argentina?
Doug