Under what conditions will the leaders of a developing economy resist dominant ideologies of modernization and development? If modernization implies maximizing GDP growth through urbanization, high-tech industry, and large-scale production, then Guizhou province in China once charted an opposing path. For more than two decades beginning in the mid-1980s, Guizhou prioritized rural-based development—investing in infrastructure and livelihood opportunities that directly benefited the rural poor. Consequently, despite posting China’s slowest GDP growth, the province achieved faster poverty reduction and rural income gains than many of its faster-growing neighbors. Yet by 2010, a new provincial regime embraced a mainstream modernization agenda centered on large-scale infrastructure and high-tech industries, especially big data. As a result, although GDP growth accelerated, poverty alleviation and rural income gains lagged, while Guizhou became China’s most indebted province. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2002 and 2025, this paper analyzes the dialectical political forces and outcomes of these two divergent strategies—highlighting the trade-offs between growth-centered modernization and more inclusive, rural-based development. It then exemplifies how this “Guizhou model” has been applied in other contexts by examining cases from countries ranging from Switzerland and Scotland to Costa Rica, Colombia, Chicago, and Hong Kong.