Nor does this mean that they must wait until they are rich before they liberalise capital: that would keep them poor much longer than necessary.
In the days before India liberalised its economy in 1991, the firm's founder, Dhirubhai Ambani, fought his way up from a menial job in Yemen through Mumbai's heaving tenements to the top of Indian business.
President Clinton made him chair of his Council of Economic Advisers, but not before he had given some wise advice to the Chinese about how to go about liberalising their economy.
Speaking before the election, Mr Abe promised progress in agriculture, health care, making the labour market more flexible, and liberalising the electricity market by separating transmission from generation.
In the years before and immediately after the euro's birth in 1999, the peripheral countries of the European monetary union (Emu) often followed Anglo-Saxon principles by liberalising parts of notoriously inflexible labour markets.
Liberalising product markets faces even stiffer opposition.
Thanks, George Osborne, for liberalising the parameters of boring.
"Key to meaningful reform is liberalising employment and company law.
For some this shows that Norway is liberalising.
Raising interest rates without liberalising the economy might suffocate it.
