to pale in comparison. In China’s historical vassal states, growth was virtually unstoppable: “By the late 70s, South Korea had industrialized at a break-neck pace under Park Chung Hee and, most galling of all, the GMD [Guomindang] regime in Taiwan was not far behind. The pressure of this setting on the PRC was inescapable” (Anderson 2010b, 79). Although the city-state of Singapore could not really be compared with China, developments under the state capitalist, de facto one-party rule of Lee Kuan Yew after 1955 and the changes in political ideology from socialism to anticommunism and ultimately Confucianism suggested a possible path to economic modernization (E. Lee 1997, 54–71). Further, the economic stagnation in other state socialist countries weakened arguments in the Chinese party-state for blocking a transition.
