My first guess is that Mao Tse Tung basically kept China in a pre-industrial communist fever dream until he died and the reformers, like Deng Xiaopeng, took ove

My first guess is that Mao Tse Tung basically kept China in a pre-industrial communist fever dream until he died and the reformers, like Deng Xiaopeng, took over in the late 70s. Then China, a nation of 1 billion people, did a speed-run on the last 300 years of Western industrial history in about 30 years. At the same time the US underwent a mass de-regulation and neo-Globalization was off to the races. edit - good example, Toyota. Right around the 70s/80s they became a massive multinational exporter. This is enabled by pax Americana and neo-liberal free trade policies which, for example, allowed Toyota to import to the US in large numbers and also build factories inside the US itself, multiply by several other companies in several other countries, massive growth. Before this time global trade was far more limited. https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/data/automotive_business/sales/sales_volume/overseas/index.html https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75ye... If we take the stock market as an analogy for energy (and hence pollution) there is just a massive explosion starting around 1980. people forget that the stock market used to be kind of boring and went down alot. https://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historic... edit - another good one. The US trade balance. I.e. the rise of the foreign nations who had "interesting" currency policies and manufacturing exports designed for the US, in order to get USD so they could participate in globalism, buy oil (sold mostly in USD), and modernize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization#/media/File:U.S._Trade_Balance_(1895%E2%80%932015)_and_Trade_Policies.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization#/media/File:U.S.... Also GDP of the Asian Tigers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Asian_Tigers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Asian_Tigers