This book lays bare an astonishing phenomenon – a decades-old, vast and deliberate system of foreign technology spotting and transfer in China and overseas, which has enabled the rise of China under the Communist Party as a neo-totalitarian, technological power. Part of China’s 100-plus year quest to modernize, since 1949, the party-state has deployed state policies, party directives, hundreds of venues, and thousands of people to access the science and technology of countries that China now challenges for global leadership.
These extraction methods are a mixture of legal, illegal and “grey zone” – and enormously effective. Prompt and wide application at home has followed transfer, with indigenous innovation growing from that. Concerned by the growing impact on the world of China’s tech-enabled authoritarianism, and the loss to creator countries of billions of dollars annually in economic output, the authors describe the system in detail and propose solutions how to manage it in ways that can protect and improve open societies.
