Investment led growth miracles that occurred in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China have almost nothing to do with innovation. These nations all suffered from excess labour and insufficient capital.
They relied on protecting domestic industry through tariffs and suppressing wages relative to productivity to sell into export markets, driving up the savings rate to facilitate further investment. They do this either through political repression of labour unions (China) or through strategic undervaluation of the currency.
South Korea and Taiwan were military dictatorships when they began this process. It's completely unremarkable that a nation that doesn't have democracy achieved middle income status, because the purpose of democracy isn't achieving economic development. Although the first nation to implement this style of economic management was a democracy, the US did so in the late 1700s after Hamilton recommended it.
The problem with this growth model is that it relies on someone somewhere to absorb the production. If not for the free market ideologues in the export markets advocating for lowering trade barriers, these growth miracles probably wouldn't have happened to the same degree. The US isn't advocating free trade out of misguided benevolence, equal access to markets is what it considers 'fair'.