[mardifoufs]

Of course liberalization isn't magical and does not solve all economic problems. There are tons of reasons why India failed in its liberalization program, lack of focus and coherent policy being the most important ones. Now of course China is far from your standard free market, but as you said, they have been enforcing a very strict protectionist policy for most of the 20th century. And for most of the 20th century, china really was full of misery and abject poverty which is something that only ended with a relatively incredible opening to the world's markets.

I also should've been more clear, what I'm talking about is more free movement of goods than the libertarian definifion of free markets. You can import and export goods in China pretty easily, but it's a nightmare in countries like Argentina. You are (or were, until recently) also relatively safer in china, when you don't have to worry about sudden anti-business measures, tariffs, or outright death by targeted regulations

Also, protectionism in south america has a very long history [0], and was already very strongly enforced much earlier than the 2000s. The concept of protecting "Infant industry" is ingrained in much of the region's recent history. And again, the countries that are doing better right now in latin america have mode liberal trade policies. I don't understand how it's not outright obvious that latin america has shot itself in the foot multiple times with very inefficient, very populist protectionist policies that made competitiveness impossible and commodities/primary goods the only productive sectors.

[0] https://www.nber.org/papers/w8999