The key difference is that what took France a century to accomplish was done in China in less than two generations, and even more remarkable is the fact that the trajectory began from incomparably more desperate, truly existential depths of the greatest famine in history. At the same time, this narrative is not such a surprise but rather an excellent example of a late starter’s advantages—mightily aided by nearly four trillion dollars of direct foreign investment and by transfer (legal and illegal) of the latest technical designs.
