It was not just this capital that Rao found in East Asia; it was also an alternative economic model. East Asian growth had been based not on free-market policies, but on what the Princeton political scientist Atul Kohli calls ‘state-directed capitalism’, i.e. the government assisting big business houses to achieve growth.54 Rao—who had been a fervent believer in the redemptive power of the state for much of his career—was instinctively attracted to this aspect of the model.
