But all of these countries enforce property rights. Hong Kong had the British enforce their brand of common law on it until 1997, and the Chinese haven't altered things much. It was British officers chasing Mao's bombs in 1967. The country became known as a trade hub because you could do business fairly there and tax rates were low.

South Korea was defended by US Marines against the North, and in the early 1950s had over 300,000 American soldiers in the country. Again, this helped stop existing power structures from taking the country, although it is distinctly more authoritarian. Was mercantilism explaining part of the variance? Sure, but I don't buy that it would have happened without US troops to secure the country and to an extent the peace.

Taiwan was guaranteed by the US (an ally of CKS and the ROC, with whom they fought the Japanese) in the same fashion including $4 billion in aid, and its prominence in electronics came from its very open policies about foreign investment in the field and low taxes. Whatever remained of the Chinese intellectual elite also moved to Taiwan with the ROC. The Economic and Financial Reform program that did away with the 4 year plans was as early as 1959.

Singapore is the most interesting case because it is the one exception to dependence on a foreign power for rights protection. In a way, Singapore exists today because of the immense skill and drive of Lee Kuan Yew. He successfully manoeuvred the exit from Malaya and 2 years-early British exit, kept the communist agents from Maoist China at bay via both pretending to act in their interest in the election (as the "safe" socialist candidate that could be the face of the Party) and by systematically exiling them thereafter. He successfully avoided US interference ("The Americans should know the character of the men they are dealing with in Singapore") yet built up an extremely impressive Army and police force inspired in great part by the martial law he had observed run by the Japanese, thus securing individual rights in the street. His economic programme - at least according to the aptly named From Third World to First - consisted of attempting to attract foreign companies so that they would both invest, and train the local workforce. Both foreign and local companies could do business safely and fairly.

Looking at tariff rates and things like income tax in isolation is not productive. Did the post-war period result in considerable US growth for decades despite sky-high personal and corporate tax rates? Sure, but most other first world countries also had them. The marginal capital gains tax was at one point in the high 90s in the UK. I remember Ogilvy saying that at his peak, Ogilvy & Mathers was paying something like 70% corporate tax. Any country that attempts these rates today would destroy whichever of its companies were unable to move abroad, and to a certain extent few countries have much ability to set tax rates and tariffs to be far from global standards, with any deviation having to be justified by other factors (for example, local ownership rules in China are mitigated by the fact that it was until recently growing at 10% a year for a while, is a market of a billion people, and had easily available, relatively high quality, cheap labour).