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Message: [QUOTE="smartascarrots, post: 10530792, member: 20853"] With massive aid and investment from its allies, ROK managed to work miracles but let's not fool ourselves that it did so on its own. It also started from a relatively high level of industrialisation by Asian standards, having been a factory for the Japanese war effort in China. The PRC, on the other hand, had virtually nothing west of the coastal strip that wasn't peasant-agrarian. They lost most of their heavy industrial capacity in the North East to the Nationalists' scorched earth policy and Soviet looting, then had to pay almost immediately for the Korean War and support to the Vietnamese nationalists in their war against the French and Americans. Incidentally, the PRC's GDP during the Great Leap Forward showed growth consistently over 5%, which would tend to refute your theory that Communists can't spur economic growth - of course they can, especially if the start point is so low. All they have to do is get things to work somewhat and hey presto. [/QUOTE]