International Technology Transfer to China

Abstract

Technology transfer to China from developed countries has been developing at a rapid pace since a market oriented economic reform policy was introduced in the early nineties. Previous research activities in this area largely concentrated on the process of technology transfer and the behaviour of concerned organisations, and the case study method was normally adopted by researchers. There seems to be a lack of qualitative research on the macro trends of technology transfer to China. The objective of this research is to produce the trends of technology transfer to China in key industrial sectors, in which further analysis based on their relations with government's policies is also carried out. The project also looks at other interesting issues, notably the comparisons among most developed countries. In order to achieve these goals, a database of major contracts signed between China and other countries in the last five years is constructed for the analysis, and a theoretical model is established to form the basic structure of the process of technology transfer. A linkage between the results derived from the database and environmental factors in the model, which mainly include political events and economic policies, is therefore established. Year, country, industrial sectors, type of agreement, and regions were selected as the key variables for the data analysis. The results demonstrate the inter-relations among these variables. In addition, key industrial sectors such as the telecommunications, aerospace, and automotive sectors are examined in detail to show that certain policies specially designed by the Chinese government have a strong influence on the level of transferred technology. The results indicate that the level of technology has become more significantly important than other factors in the transfer process, and the Chinese government's policies have achieved their original goals of attracting more advanced technology to specific industrial sectors.