John Minnich

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268 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 6 Aug

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Unhedged · The Economics Show: China wanted western tech. Now, the tables have turned. · 6 Aug 2026 podcast

And what that meant was that the U.S.

had a very strong strategic interest in accelerating their industrialization or in the case of Japan, their reindustrialization.

And so the U.S.

government actively transferred various kinds of military technologies to these countries and supported the transfer of commercial technologies to these countries.

But importantly, it did so without requiring them to open up their markets.

to foreign investment from the US.

So these countries, by virtue of their role as US allies, were able to, in a sense, get the benefits of foreign technology without paying the cost in terms of foreign competition.

And of course, this option wasn't available to China.

And I think a big part of what motivates technology transfer policies in China was precisely because it wasn't an ally of the US.

It really had no option in the 80s and especially the 90s for obtaining technology from

except by opening up its market to capital and competition.

And so technology transfer policies, in a way, are a response to the basic dilemma that this generates, which is how do we harness that technology we need for our development without ceding the market to more productive foreign multinational enterprises?

So before China joined the WTO or the World Trade Organization in 2001, it used a variety of policy tools.

But I would say during this period, by far the most important – and this, of course, continues to be the case in the post-WTO period – was joint venture requirements on foreign firms seeking to invest in China.

And I think it's important to underscore just how important joint venture requirements and therefore technology transfer were then.

to the decision to open up to foreign capital in the first place.

And really, the story of reform and opening beginning in 1978 is inextricable from the strategic goal of bringing in foreign capital so you can acquire technology.

The problem that China faced in the 1980s and 1990s, I mean, first the 1980s, there was, in fact, very little foreign direct investment into China, and it was concentrated in a handful of industries and primarily in the special economic zones in cities like Shenzhen.

And at that time, most of it was concentrated in low value added manufacturing sectors like textiles.

So it didn't bring a lot of technology content into China.

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