--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> C'mon Woj, I'm mostly with you on this, but Taiwan
> is
> not mainland China.
>
[WS:] Of course it is not, but it can be used as a decent counterfactual to China. It has a lot of "ceteris paribus" qualities - rural backwardness, similar culture, similar general approach to moderization (centralism, import substituton policies). What they separates them, inter alia, s the anti-intellectualism cum anti-Sovietism unleashed by Mao agianst his "revisionist" pro-modernization rivals (Liu Shaotsi sp?). I think that this rural idiocy (decenralization of industry to rural comunes, forced relocation of urban population to the countryside) was a big setback to China's development.
In the meantime, Taiwan was gradually reducing its import substitution policies and encouraged export oriented policies which eventually established it as a hi-tech power house.
Wojtek