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China Linking Technology and Economics
As they have accumulated experience in dealing with foreign
corporations, Chinese economic administrators and enterprise
managers have become better able to negotiate contracts that, while
not full joint ventures, still permit the necessary training and
consultation in the use of foreign technology. By the late l980s,
the transfer of foreign technology had become a normal commercial
transaction. To an increasing extent, policy and practices for
technology transfer were becoming part of general economic and
foreign trade policies. China faced problems in assimilating
technology in the factories that imported it and in deciding which
foreign technologies to import. It was becoming clear to Chinese
planners and foreign suppliers of technology that these problems
reflected overall deficiencies in technical and management skills
and that they were general economic and management problems. The
solution to these problems was increasingly seen by Chinese
administrators as lying in reforms of the economy and industrial
management. The effort to import and assimilate foreign technology
thus served to help unify technology policy and economic policy and
to overcome the problems of the separation of science, technology,
and the economy, which China's leaders had been trying to solve
since the early 1950s.
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Because of the continuity of the issues affecting China's
science and technology, many of the studies carried out in the
early 1960s are still useful. Among these are Leo A. Orleans'
Professional Manpower and Education in Communist China, Wu
Yuan-li and Robert B. Sheeks' The Organization and Support of
Scientific Research and Development in Mainland China, and
Cheng Chu-yuan's Scientific and Engineering Manpower in
Communist China, 1949-1963. Richard P. Suttmeier's 1974
Research and Revolution: Science Policy and Societal Change in
China sets out most of the basic policy choices for science in
China. Articles by Suttmeier and Denis Fred Simon cover most
aspects of current science policy. Science in Contemporary
China, edited by Orleans, assesses the state of science in
China as of 1980. Rudi Volti's Technology, Politics, and Society
in China and K.C. Yeh's Industrial Innovation in China with
Special Reference to the Metallurgical Industry provide good
overviews of China's science and technology system. Current news of
policies and achievements in science and technology is available in
such Chinese sources as Beijing Review, China Daily,
and China Exchange News. Chinese reports and discussions of
science and technology policy are translated and published in the
Joint Publications Research Service's China Report: Science and
Technology. (For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of July 1987
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