> The same goes for countries. Starting about 1970, China took some of
> the effective rules of Hong Kong (which was managed from afar by England)
> and set up four special economic zones along the coast operating as
> imitation Hong Kongs. They worked so well that China rolled out the
> scheme for the whole country, and its Gross Domestic Product took off.
It's amazing how histories of Hong Kong omit the fact that the place was built by developmental states. Hong Kong was one of the richest cities in all of Asia in 1950, with a British-financed infrastructure, and tons of entrepreneurs from Shanghai, who took their skills, capital and cameras with them (thus founding the Hong Kong film biz). The British colonial administration invested heavily in education and housing, and Hong Kong exporters got rich thanks to the Pacific Rim boom (financed first by US military-industrial Keynesianism, then later by Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and latest of all mainland Chinese developmental states). Hong Kong remained the one open sea-port available to mainland China during most of the Cold War, defying the US trade embargo (the mainland let the British run the place, in return for trade access).
-- DRR