> how come ? because prc had deng xiaoping and the ussr had a bunch of senile bureaucrats who cared about covering their own fat assess instead of improving the country. > well the chinese didn't just tear down everything like monkeys, they kept working on what they had, they kept communism the chinese didn't really have any industry worth keeping when deng's reforms started. they did, however, agree to become the world's sweatshop in exchange for cash and, much more importantly, access to western technology and know-how. the ussr could, in theory, go down the same path, but, unfortunately, we didn't have our own deng for that. > unlike chinese, right. the chinese didn't have any products at all. they skipped like 4 decades of r&d because the factories were imported wholesale from the west in exchange for near-free labor.
Japan