Hacker News Reader

Communist China says hi! And the British Empire was hardly a bastion of freedom and yet kickstarted the industrial revolution. Even the USSR, for all ita horrific flaws and mass murdering ways turned the Russian Empire from an agrarian one to an industrial powerhouse in 2 decades.

View on HN

Russian industrialization started well before the USSR came to power. The Trans Siberian Railway for example first opened in 1904. The locomotive’s boilers, engines and some other components were built in Saint Petersburg, industry was alive and well at the time.

Arguably it was the new power blocks associated with industry that destabilized Tsarist Russia, not that WWI helped.

Communist China has not been a "free country", it has (had?) several free trade zones (FTZs) which are special economic zones where goods may be imported, handled, manufactured and exported without direct intervention from customs. Thus there has been very very limited government and regulation in these FTZs. With minimal government there, the FTZs enabled them to succeed. Everywhere else in China there was (is?) stagnation and the only way out was to move into these FTZs as a citizen to get ahead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com