Either propaganda or inability to get outside of one's own bubble? I don't think it was a coincidence that all of the Asian countries had strong central govern

Either propaganda or inability to get outside of one's own bubble? I don't think it was a coincidence that all of the Asian countries had strong central governments with commitments to long-term planning, at the times of their ascension. Even today, they send hordes of students to American engineering universities, as if the aggressive industrial policy never ended. At CMU, there were roughly as many Singaporean, Thai, Taiwanese, and Korean students (i.e. each of them) as there were students from the Midwest, in the engineering program I was in. And they were much much better prepared for the material than 9 out of 10 of the American students. From them, I gathered a picture of societies that had strong policies designed to build out the kind of economy that poor countries would love to have. Liberal, it was not.