Book Review: How Asia Works - by Scott Alexander - Astral Codex Ten - astralcodexten.substack.com

...

What was the best thing that ever happened? From a very zoomed-out, by-the-numbers perspective, it has to be China's sudden lurch from Third World basketcase to dynamic modern economy. A billion people went from starving peasants to the middle class. In the 1960s, sixty million people died of famine in the Chinese countryside; by the 2010s, that same countryside was criss-crossed with the world's most advanced high-speed rail network, and dotted with high-tech factories. And the best thing that ever happened kept happening, again and again. First it was Japan during the Meiji Restoration.…

related reading

• Structure and Interpretation of the Chinese Economy – Yuxi on the Wiredyuxi.ml
• Review: How Africa Worksglobal-developments.org
• Why China got rich and India didn'tdavidoks.blog
• Structure and Interpretation of the Chinese Economy – Yuxi on the Wiredyuxi.ml
• Do poor countries need a new development strategy?noahpinion.blog
• Can India industrialize?noahpinion.substack.com
• Economic development is doing OKnoahpinion.substack.com
• How the World Works - 93.12theatlantic.com
• Why China got rich and India didn'tsubstack.com
• Rediscovering the importance of export discipline | The Tangled Woofandrewbatson.com
• The Long, Slow Death of Global Development - American Affairs Journalamericanaffairsjournal.org
• General Laws of the Rise of Great Powers | China Open Source Observatorychinaopensourceobservatory.org