Adaptation from the Core, Emerging from the Periphery: The Advantage of Backwardness, Technology Transfer and Industrialization of China

Document Type : Research

Author

Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran.

Abstract

Following the Industrial Revolution in England, and the growth of modern industrialized countries, China became a backward country on the margins of modern civilization. China is now in the midst of transitioning to the industrialized nations. this article analyzes the realities of this great transition from the perspective of Gerschenkron backwardness advantage theory, the essence of the advantage of backwardness is that developing countries have a vast space and strong driving force to learn the technology, systems and successful experience from the developed countries when they carry out their own industrialization and modernization. instead, they have a great advantage in backwardness that encourages them to learn from the developed areas and have the potential to catch up with them. since 1978, China has been focusing on technology transfer in order to make this potential advantage to real economic advantage and get great-leap-forward industrialization, and catching up with the United States as the most advanced industrial economy. so still relatively backward comparing with the United States, despite the rapid development in recent years but these do not show that it will not achieve great progress. The findings show that China has narrowed the technology gap with leading countries, and it is close to the frontier of innovation, so unlike in the past It cannot grow rapidly by adopting and embracing cheap technology from the United States, rather, it must bear the heavy costs of R&D in innovation, So China's economic growth will not be as rapid as it has been in the past four decades.

Keywords

References

بهرامی مقدم، سجاد (1397)، «مواجهة چین و غرب مدرن، امتناع، یادگیری و دگرگونی»، پژوهش‌های روابط بین‌الملل، دورة هشتم، ش 1، پیاپی 27.
زکریا، فرید (1398)، از ثروت به قدرت، ریشه‌های نامتعارف نقش جهانی آمریکا، ترجمة نجف شیخ‌سرایی، محسن توکلیان، و حسین‌علی یارخی، تهران: روزنه.
عجم اوغلو، دارون، دیوید لیبسون، و جان لیست (1397)، کلیات علم اقتصاد، ترجمة سید‌علیرضا بهشتی شیرازی و محمدحسین نعیمی‌پور، تهران: روزنه.
گیلپین، رابرت (1398)، جنگ و تغییر در سیاست جهان، ترجمة سجاد بهرامی مقدم، تهران: مخاطب.
 References
Atkinson, R. D. and C. Foot (2019), “Is China Catching Up to the United States in Innovation?ˮ, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Bowles, P. and G. White (2019), The Political Economy of China's Financial Reforms: Finance in Late Development, Routledge.
Buzan, B. and G. Lawson (2015), The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations, vol. 135, Cambridge University Press.
Deng, Y. (2011), Ancient Chinese Inventions, Cambridge University Press.
Elvin, Mark (1973), The Pattern of the Chinese Past: A Social and Economic Interpretation, Stanford University Press
Feenstra, R. C. and A. Sasahara (2018), “The ‘China Shock,’Exports and US Employment: A Global Input-Output Analysisˮ, Review of International Economics, 26(5).
Gavin, Weightman (2007), The Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776-1914, New York: Grove Press.
Gerschenkron, A. (1962), Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: a Book of Essays (no. 330.947 G381), Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Glaser, B. S. (2019), “Made in China 2025 and the Future of American Industryˮ, Center for Strategic International Studies.
Hannas, W. C. and D. K. Tatlow (eds.). (2020), China's Quest for Foreign Technology: Beyond Espionage, Routledge.
Howell, S. T. (2018), Joint Ventures and Technology Adoption: A Chinese Industrial Policy that Backfired, Research Policy, 47(8).
Jiang, K. et al. (2018), International Joint Ventures and Internal vs. External Technology Transfer: Evidence from China, no. w24455, National Bureau of Economic Research.
Kolodko, G. W. (2020), China and the Future of Globalization: The Political Economy of China's Rise, Bloomsbury.
Manyika, J., W. H. McRaven, and A. Segal (2019), Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge, Council on Foreign Relations.
Ming, W. X. and Z. Xing (1999), “A New Strategy of Technology Transfer to Chinaˮ, International Journal of Operations & Production Management.
Naughton, B. (2019), “China’s International Political Economy-the Changing Economic Contextˮ, in: Handbook on the International Political Economy of China, Edward Elgar.
O’Connor, S. (2019), “How Chinese Companies Facilitate Technology Transfer from the United Statesˮ, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission Staff Research Report.
Oman, Charles (1924), A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, vol. 2, Methuen & Company Limited.
Prud'homme, D. (2019), “Reform of China’s ‘Forced’Technology Transfer Policiesˮ, University of Oxford Law Faculty’s OBLB.
Prud'homme, D., M. von Zedtwitz, J. J. Thraen, M. and Bader (2018), “Forced Technology Transfer”, Policies: Workings in China and Strategic Implicationsˮ, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 134.
Rosenberg, J. and C. Boyle (2019), “Understanding 2016: China, Brexit and Trump in the History of Uneven and Combined Developmentˮ, Journal of Historical Sociology, 32(1).
Selwyn, B. (2011), “Trotsky, Gerschenkron and the Political Economy of late Capitalist Developmentˮ, Economy and Society, 40(3).
Shen, Y. et al. (2020), “Sustainable Total Factor Productivity Growth: The Case of Chinaˮ, Journal of Cleaner Production, 256, 120727.
Sit, V. F. (1988), “China's Export-Oriented Open Areas: The Export Processing Zone Conceptˮ, Asian Survey.
Stephen, Brent (2019), “The Secret of Their Success, How China Rode the Foreign Technology Waveˮ, American Interest Magazine, Published on: October 22, 2019.
Vogel, E. F. (2011), Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, vol. 10, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Walsh, K. A. (1999), “U.S. Commercial Technology Transfers to the People’s Republic of Chinaˮ, A Report to the Office of Strategic Industries and Economic Security, Bureau of Export Administration: <www.bis.doc.gov>.
Wang, S. (1999), The Political Economy of Uneven Development: The Case of China, ME Sharpe.
Wedeman, A. H. (2003), From Mao to Market: Rent Seeking, Local Protectionism, and Marketization in China, Cambridge University Press.
William, Rosen (2010), The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention,New York: Random House.
Yueh, L. and J. Van Reenen (2012), “Why Has China Grown so Fast?ˮ, The Role of International Technology Transfer.
Zenglein, M. J. and A. Holzmann (2019), “Evolving Made in China 2025: China’s Industrial Policy in the Quest for Global Tech Leadershipˮ, MERICS Papers on China, (8), 2019-07.
Zhou, W., H. Jiang, Q. and Kong (2019), “Technology Transfer under China’s Foreign Investment Regime: Does the WTO Provide a Solution?ˮ, Forthcoming (2020), 54(3).
International Political Economy Studies
Volume 3, Issue 1
September 2020
Pages 231-256

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 04 April 2020
  • Revise Date: 01 September 2020
  • Accept Date: 02 September 2020

Share

How to cite

Statistics