It's very complicated, some of the greatest successes in catching up to 'developed nations' have relied on open markets and others have been far more protection

It's very complicated, some of the greatest successes in catching up to 'developed nations' have relied on open markets and others have been far more protectionist. Protectionism has huge negatives in exchange for the benefit of being able to have a local industry in an area that's not disrupted by global markets. With a few exceptions, said industry is unlikely to become globally competitive and mostly competes for the market of the country it's in which may be a tiny portion of the global market. In contrast, industries honed by competition may be able to compete in the global marketplace, but are largely restricted by the practices that make them competitive there which tend to involve cheap labour for lower prices. If there were very clear answers here we would have seen far more countries following them to develop. Unfortunately, the truth is it's an extremely complicated case by case decision where it's very hard to know the right answer in general. We tend to see a strong bias for open markets on the right and protectionism on the left, which further complicates things as neither solution seems to capture the whole problem.