Backwardness has its advantages. The latecomer to industrialisation can learn from the example of countries that went before it. China, unsurprisingly, gleans what it can from the models to its east: Japan and South Korea. On occasion, its policymakers have revealed a longing for their own national champions, imperious industrial conglomerates akin to the keiretsu of Japan and the chaebol of South Korea. In 1998 Wu Bangguo, a deputy prime minister, argued that China's international economic standing "will be to a large extent determined by the position of our nation's large industrial groups".
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