The modernization of economic life in a globalized world is far more difficult, and yet in a way more simple, than is often believed. It requires above all a will to change and then the choice and implementation of constructive reforms that benefit the vast majority in a country, not just the elite. The twentieth century has shown clearly that “revolution” in the Leninist sense, the violent overthrow of a government by a small vanguard and its replacement by something presumably different, does not benefit most people. In fact, it has always resulted in the creation of what Milovan Djilas called a “new class,” a new elite. As Lenin himself knew well, “revolutions” can easily become “restorations” of traditional authoritarian or despotic systems, which is what happened in Russia, China, and several other countries that for a long time took the communist route. And yet the reforms we discuss here are in many respects truly revolutionary, since they propose the adoption of very different ways of thinking and of often new institutions that convert without violence, or with less violence than in the country’s past, different ideas and objectives into reality. Justifying the most revolutionary economic changes China has ever seen, Deng Xiaoping said: “To get rich is glorious.” The enormous changes that thinking has brought to China are readily apparent. Yet, while political authoritarianism has involved a degree of repression, although the traditional and communist statist orientation of the courts has continued, and although guanxi(connections) often is still the best way to get things done, the law is increasingly a tool of the powerless (Diamant, Lubman and O’Brien 2005).