[mardifoufs]

I totally realize that China is far from liberal but it has been much more prosperous and became a superpower because it has liberalized vast swaths of the economy. I guess it would have been better to say that it's doing better than India because it moved a hypothetical protectionism-free trade slider further to the free trade side. There are tons of smart decisions from China that also made the liberalization very successful, such as understanding the vital importance of foreign capital, access to the world's markets, infrastructure investment, and slowly building up knowledge instead of going all in "in house" too quickly.

Still, none of what has been accomplished in China could've been possible with very high tariffs, obsession in homegrown industry before acquiring expertise, and obsession with policies that have always failed but still sound good to the electorate. All of which are characteristic of India, Argentina, Egypt, etc. And I'd argue that China is better when it comes to free movement of trade than India even if it's much worst in almost every other type of freedom.