Singapore aside, they all did it under authoritarian governance with massive US/western support at peak of US hegemony as essential vassals. They played great o

Singapore aside, they all did it under authoritarian governance with massive US/western support at peak of US hegemony as essential vassals. They played great on easy mode. VS PRC which was sanctioned/contained by west, India less so but never the less got fucked with but held back by messy democracy that can't put together an industrial policy. And great is relative, high gdp / standard of living is great for citizens, and ultimately that matters a lot. But a country in terms of comprehensive power can be "great" via modest income and sheer scale, i.e. PRC who developed indigenous military, space, nuclear program (all while sanctioned) and essentially every industrial sector has much more comprehensive power than a Asian Tiger that's dependent on US protection and got US credit card for basically playing part in coldwar PRC containment. PRC generally industrialized faster than any of these countries after detente, through much more sectors, but simply have too many people to ever reach parity per capita income. PRC is doing well on hard mode. Not to mention US aligned authoritarian petro states like Qatar, UAE, somewhat Brunai also do much better than the Asian Tigers. At end of day, being small/medium size country under US patronage get rich. Being authoritarian helps, being a resource based economy helps more. But geopolitically, "greatness" extends to more domains than just standard of living. Otherwise, UAE is greater than US. Except they're obviously not.