B级： The diffusion of knowledge is the dominant trend of our time. What was happening in Britain duringthe lndustriai Revolution was not an isolated phenomenon. A succession of visitors to Britain would go backfo their countries to report on the technological innovations they saw there. Sometimes societies were able tolearn extremely fast, as in the United States. Others, like Italy, benefited from starting kate, leapfrogging thelong-drawn out process that Britain went through. This diffusion of knowledge accelerated dramatically in recent years. Over the last 30 years we havewatched countries like Japan, Singapore and now China grow at a pace that is four times that of Britain at thepeak of the Industrial Revolution. They have been able to do this because of their energies, of course, butalso because they cleverly adopted certain ideas about development that had worked in the West--relativelyfree markets, open trade, a focus on science and technology, among them. And this shift is happening allaround the world. From Thailand to South Afl-ica, from Brazil to Mexico, countries are far better managedecommfically than they have ever been.