Business
A late-developing country can transform its industrial structure by buying advanced foreign technology cheaply and having the state make sure domestic firms actually absorb and use it. The gain comes less from inventing than from organized, guided adoption.
An economic bureaucracy can drive rapid growth by identifying which industrial sectors matter most and steering resources toward them. This targeting, rather than leaving sector choice to the market, is presented as a core engine of high-speed growth.
Export strength was built on a growing domestic market rather than in place of one. Policies that expanded internal demand gave targeted industries the scale to compete abroad, and keeping that focus was politically sustainable over decades.
The machinery of a war economy can survive defeat and be repurposed for civilian growth. A munitions ministry acting as an economic general staff turned into the trade and industry ministry that guided the postwar boom.
State-led industrialization can deliver rapid national growth while imposing heavy costs on ordinary people and on small and medium firms. The gains of the strategy flowed mainly to large conglomerates, both before and after the war.