kamil on 07 December 2007
@Final-Fan: I agree about China's and their errors in the past (they make errors still like banning Wikipedia for example) however I don't agree that Hongkong had much to do with it, China was growing before taking over of Hongkong. Also it's a little territory. There live around 7mln people as opposed to 1.3 bln living in China so it wasn't even possible to save China by Hongkong. I agree that there are lot more of capitalism freedom in China than it used to be but this doesn't change the fact that China is still considered a communist counry as there are no strict rules as wheter a country is communist or not (and many left-winged people do not consider any of existing of former communist countres as a true communist).
I'm not qualified to debate on what living under Soviet rule did or didn't to to Poland, but I bet it was more than what you imply by "slowed down development".
Poland never was a part of Soviet union. It was influenced by it, especially during Stalin's time but it's also influenced (by Washington and Brussels mostly) now.
The economic slowdown is the most importent effect of Polish political system during that time. There of course are others things but they are not as important and are often debatble.
