There is also the example of China which has policies that favor local companies and China has created dramatically more economic value for it's citizens than India's open market.
Correlation isn’t causation. China could have done even better than it did if it was a more open market, and indeed it didn’t start growing rapidly until the government started getting out of the way in the 80s.
England, France and the US have vested interests in China not growing, atleast a very powerful minority do. Opening markets when these foreign actors very recently attacked your population is basically suicide.
Open markets require a certain level of development. Post-Xi (and his anti-corruption measures), this will be possible.
> England, France and the US have vested interests in China not growing, atleast a very powerful minority do.
I'll admit I don't know much about China, but this seems like a very board statement. Could you expand on it a bit? What powerful minority are you thinking of? Aren't they already growing? I mean, China has pretty much taken over a ton of manufacturing.
I generally use England interchangeably with Britian for Opium War related statements, because the main actors (and beneficiaries) at the end of the day were English, not Irish, not Australian, etc... down the list.
Germans werent huge Opium pushers at the time (compared to the English, French, and American). So score 1 for Germany, good decision on their part.
I would expect not having major part of your economy propped up by illcit trading has long term positive consequences, Germany is enjoying the fruits of that to some extent.
You can predict what people with ill-gotten gains do with their money (it's a different discussion but consider what corruption costs society/economy when looking at the 2nd and 3rd order effects of corrupt money).
>"Also, can you clarify what you mean by “attacked their >population”?"
The opium epedemic and wars drove the Chinese economy into the ground.
British invasion and colonization of India pushed one of the top trading nations and #1 GDP (China & India competed to maintain #1 status for 2000 years) in the world into the ground.
The decline of the Qing dynasty drove the economy into the ground even before the British started opium there. China loves to blame foreigners for all of their problems, but a lot of it was self inflicted.
Your timeline is a little off. The Qing dynasty decline was partly to blame but be sure that almost 1/4 of Chinese young adults under the age 25 being addicted to illegal opium (thanks to western traders) didn't help. If you think that wasn't a contributing factor, it is being ahistorical.
US and Western Europe is facing this growing opioid issue today (during an economic decline), if we are not careful, we will see very clearly the effects (both socially and economically) of opioids poisoning the gene pool en masse.
Trump is actively setting trade/economic policy considering 18-19th century history (economic history more specifically).
Remember the Opium Wars and the families it made rich (most famous, Coolidge (descendants of Thomas Jefferson), Roosevelts (through the Delano family), Forbes (John Kerry's family), etc.. in the US). On the otherside of the pond, in 1890 (peak opium crisis), 30% of Britain's GDP was illegal opium smuggling to China.
The seperator between government and companies isn't as big as you think when this much multi-generational wealth and political power is invloved.
Kind of funny that many don't know their own history (Roman history is tough...going through 300 years of US history is trivially easy but most still don't).
Yes, there's lots of ugly in US history. It's been very effectively suppressed. Most Americans will think that you're some sort of conspiracy theorist :(
And by the way, US tobacco manufacturers also managed to addict most of Southeast Asia. I highly recommend Drugs and Rights by Douglas N. Husak (Rutgers, 1992).[0]
Economic history has less incentive to lie and it's hard to retroactively change 100 years of accounting/trade history to maintain a fake national narrative.
Remember in international trade, atleast 3 seperate entities end up with copies of every transaction (buyer/seller/shipper).
If co-relation isnt causation then you can say the same about becoming an open market too right? Also, there is a difference between government ownership of enterprises, private but domestic ownership and foreign ownership. China has tried to ensure that important businesses are owned domestically.