East Asia is the only region which was certainly 'poor' but now can be described as somewhat 'rich', and they are all more or less followed the same pattern:
- low wage, high volume, light industry for export
- lower wage, high volume, heavy industry
- multi-decade protectionism to raise global competitive domestic champions
- no democracy, if you can help it to ensure political stability to execute multi-decade strategy
Idiosyncratic caveats:
- Japan got its boost particularly by becoming the arms manufacturer for the US in the Korean War
- Singapore / Hong Kong also had financial liberalisation / international money laundering for the Brits
- Korea / Taiwan / Hong Kong also had shipping
China has followed clearly the same trend (note the irrelevance of the political system, main thing is to avoid democratic instability), simply becoming more massive than any before because it is inherently massive, and has therefore even greater economies of scale to leverage.
- low wage, high volume, light industry for export - lower wage, high volume, heavy industry - multi-decade protectionism to raise global competitive domestic champions - no democracy, if you can help it to ensure political stability to execute multi-decade strategy
Idiosyncratic caveats:
- Japan got its boost particularly by becoming the arms manufacturer for the US in the Korean War
- Singapore / Hong Kong also had financial liberalisation / international money laundering for the Brits
- Korea / Taiwan / Hong Kong also had shipping
China has followed clearly the same trend (note the irrelevance of the political system, main thing is to avoid democratic instability), simply becoming more massive than any before because it is inherently massive, and has therefore even greater economies of scale to leverage.