YOU CAN'T ONLY PARTIALLY eND:

China is arguably the valedictorian of Asia's MBA program. When Deng Xiaoping ditched the radical economics of Mao and steered China into the global economy beginning in the early 1980s, he borrowed liberally from programs and policies that had earlier ignited rapid growth in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. The student quickly outshone the teachers, riding an export-led, investment-heavy strategy to years of double-digit growth.

Now, however, China's President Xi Jinping appears to have misplaced his textbooks. Rather than continuing to heed the experiences of Asia's tiger economies, he's ignoring critical lessons at his -- and China's -- peril.

Probably the key truism to emerge from the region's postwar boom is that if countries are to grow quickly, development must subsume all other priorities. Former South Korean President Park Chung Hee, who launched his country's economic ascent, put it best when he wrote: "In human life, economics precedes politics or culture."

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