Birth of plenty, but work still to be done

Property rights, scientific rationalism, capital markets, and improvements in transport and communications are the four factors that have made the world what it is now, William J. Bernstein concludes in his book The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World Was Created.

The economic growth in China in the past three decades seems to be another chapter in this story of progress, as the reform and opening-up initiated in 1978, created nothing but these four factors, albeit in their fledgling forms or preliminary stages.

Chairman Mao, of course, famously said that it is people who are the motivating power behind the progress of history.