“[T]he intellectual tyranny of neo-classical ‘efficiency’ economics – the natural subject matter of rich countries – means that it is all but impossible to have an honest discussion about economic development. Poor states can only be successful by lying. They have to subscribe publicly to the ‘free market’ economics touted by the rich while pursuing the kind of interventionist policies that are actually necessary to become rich in the first place. It is a very hard thing to recommend lying, but in this instance one has to. The alternative – to rail against Western intellectual hegemony and to stick your rhetorical finger in the eye of its leader, the United States, as Mao, Sukarno and Mahathir did – is pure folly. Far better to take a page out of Park Chung Hee or contemporary China’s book: make public pronouncements about the importance of free markets, and then go quietly about your dirigiste business.”
Joe Studwell (2014), How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region, London: Profile Books Ltd., p.223-4.
The Political Economy of Development 