China's Quest for Foreign Technology

CONCLUSION

William C. Hannas and Didi Kirsten Tatlow

As we have shown, foreign technology—transferred licitly, illicitly, and “by various means” (以多种方式)—fuels much of China’s development, reducing the cost of research and shielding its Communist Party and government from the openness that democracies rely on to fuel innovation. Thanks to these transfer programs and to its own efforts, China can maintain parity or near-parity with advanced countries without the burdens of intellectual diversity. While anathema to widely accepted notions of creativity and research propriety, this mixed system of borrowing, theft, and indigenous development has been remarkably effective.

The fact that many of these transfers are legal, or cannot be easily traced ...