This bringing together of cronyism and growth became a deliberate economic strategy, as author Joe Studwell explained in his 2013 book How Asia Works. In countries like South Korea and Malaysia, businesses were tacitly allowed to skim off the top, so long as they did so while investing in the kind of exporting industries and infrastructure developments their governments wanted. “Rents are the bait with which the successful developing state captures and controls its entrepreneurs,” as Studwell put it.51
