I'm not sure about the other Asian countries mentioned, but in India we kind of messed up when public sector companies were competing with privately owned compa

I'm not sure about the other Asian countries mentioned, but in India we kind of messed up when public sector companies were competing with privately owned companies in the same sphere. The government always bailed out the public companies whenever they messed up, but the private companies themselves have managed to set up organized anti-competitive cartels wherever possible. But that said, tariffs alone can't explain how some economies succeed or fail. There are a lot of other variables which tend to be ignored in such simplistic thesis about macroeconomic outcomes, as there always are.