> Yes, but China has something that puts them in the drivers seat: a market
> so huge and so coveted that investors are begging to put money in it. So
> they can treat them worse than in other countries without being subjected
> to a capital strike. They have escaped the golden hand-cuffs.
>
> India, the one other country that shares this advantage, seems to be using
> it in the opposite way, as a base for ISI, which at least theoretically
> has a qualitatively better chance when your middle class market alone is
> the size of the EU.
>
> This is why I think of them as "gigantic exceptions" to the laws of
> development: their key advantage is what has allowed them both to follow
> development paths as different from the Washington consensus as Korea's
> was, and it is not replicable by any other developing country. But it's
> certainly good for the world's poor that so many of them are located
> there.
You're exactly right that size matters. But I don't think China's and India's models are irreproducable. Mercosur has 230 million people. Imagine if you added Colombia and Venezuela.
Seth