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Index Entry
Industrialization: Successive Halving Time of National Industrialization:
“Industrialization has a very interesting pattern. As a new country begins to industrialize it does not copy what the older country did first. Even after World War II engineers thought that a new industrial country would have to copy every single thing in the United States that we did. But you will find that is not the way it goes. Japan did not start with the cloth-covered bi-plane of the earlier Americans. They started right in with the aluminum spitfire level. And China comes into industrialization starting right in without even having propeller airplanes. What took England 200 years to do was matched by the United States in 100 years, simply because we started in with the knowledge and the principles and a fresh start, whereas they had to keep adjusting the old machinery to keep it running. So the new fellow comes in at a great advantage. Russia industrialized in 50 years and it’s very probable that China is going to industrialize in the extraordinary period of 25 years. This is what’s going to really surprise the whole world. Somewhere around 1975-- as short as that-- China’s going to be almost approaching affluence.”
