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Most economists (the great majority of whom are believers in capitalism and therefore supportive of all market enhancing policies) are well aware of the main trends highlighted above, in particular the critical role played by transnational corporations in promoting China’s transformation into an export-oriented economy. They generally dismiss concerns that these trends signify the growth of a destructive foreign dependence on the grounds that by embracing market forces (and especially foreign investment) the reform process has boosted China’s technological capacities, highlighted in part by the growing technological sophistication of Chinese exports and leading Chinese firms. This claim, which is echoed by the current Chinese government, has encouraged many progressive economists to advocate adoption of similar policies in other countries (Hart-Landsberg and Burkett 2005a: Introduction and Chapter 1).
I disagree with this claim. One reason is that it incorrectly implies that marketization, privatization, and deregulation were necessary to lift China out of technological backwardness. The Chinese government’s assertion that Mao-era policies were an economic disaster is often cited as support for this mistaken view. The truth is that while the Chinese economy suffered from economic problems at the close of the Mao era (including over-centralization of decision-making and an overemphasis on heavy industry at the expense of other sectors of the economy), state planning and production recorded many outstanding achievements as well.
As Maurice Meisner points out, between 1952 and 1977, “the output of Chinese industry increased at an average annual rate of 11.3 percent, as rapid a pace of industrialization as has ever been achieved by any country during a comparable period in modern world history.... By the mid-1970s China was manufacturing jet airplanes, heavy tractors, and modern ocean-going vessels in substantial quantities. The People’s Republic was also producing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles; it first launched a satellite in 1970, six years after its first successful atomic bomb test” (Meisner 1999: 415.) To put these gains into relative perspective: “Starting with an industrial base smaller than that of Belgium’s in the early 1950s... China emerged at the end of the Mao period as one of the six largest industrial producers in the world” (Meisner 1999: 417.)
Also noteworthy is the fact that these gains were achieved largely by China’s own efforts. Isolated from international trade and investment for most of the Mao era, China was forced to develop its own technological capabilities while remaining free of foreign debt—an incredible and uncredited legacy bequeathed to post-Mao regimes.
Looking at the computer sector, for example, Andrew Ross notes that:
In the 1950s, the new communist state established a science and technology R&D network, modeled after the Soviet system, and its electronics arm went on to produce several generations of computers, in many cases with little or no gap behind the capitalist powers. China’s first computer was developed in 1958, only one year after Japan’s and its first integrated circuit was produced in 1964, only five years behind the first U.S. patent. A microcomputer was developed by 1977 (even before IBM unveiled its PC), a microprocessor by 1980, and a supercomputer, along with an IBM-compatible PC, by 1983. (Ross 2006: 233)
A closer look at the Mao era policies underpinning these gains highlights both their strengths and limits. Research and development activities in China were hierarchically organized and funded accordingly. At the top was the Chinese Academy of Sciences which oversaw numerous research institutes and universities. At the next level were military and ministry controlled research labs. The third level was composed of research institutes under the control of regional industrial bureaus. The government used this structure to ensure that the country’s research efforts would be responsive to its own military and heavy industry priorities. And, as highlighted above, the effort paid off in the development of required critical technologies (Lu 2000: Chapter 1).
At the same time, this approach gave low priority to non-military related research. There were few if any links between the top research facilities and light manufacturing industries, for example. Moreover, given the country’s system of highly centralized planning, within which state enterprises concentrated on fulfilling centrally developed plans, there was little demand by non-military related enterprises for the development of new computer technologies and applications. Thus, central planning both generated enormous technological gains and also held back their wider diffusion because there were no mechanisms in place to encourage it.[4]
There is reason to believe that the government was preparing to adjust its planning priorities to address this problem. Nixon visited China in 1972, leading to a dramatic improvement in relations between the United States and the PRC. “Soon after, China launched the ‘Four-modernization Plan’ (i.e. modernization of industry, agriculture, science and technology, and defense) in 1974, indicating a shift of economic priorities from single-minded military and heavy industrial build-up to raising the living standards of ordinary citizens” (Lu 2000: 7). In other words, once the Chinese government no longer felt threatened by the United States, it launched a new initiative that was designed, among other things, to encourage research directed at improving the quality and diversity of consumer goods.
Of course, it is impossible to know whether this initiative would have succeeded. Mao died in 1976 and soon after the new leadership of the Communist Party launched its reform program dismantling the country’s existing political-economy.[5] However, what is relevant for our discussion here is the fact that China had a strong national research and development infrastructure in place before the start of the reform period. Said differently, without the prior accomplishments of state planning and production, the market reforms are unlikely to have produced the gains that they did.
There is another and more important reason to be critical of the conventional wisdom which celebrates China’s market reforms. It is that after a relatively brief period (one to two decades) of economic dynamism stimulated largely by early decentralization initiatives, the reform process is slowly but steadily eroding the country’s technological and national development capacities. This is illustrated by the post-reform evolution of China’s high-tech industries, especially its computer industry.
Starting in the early 1980s, the Chinese government began reducing the direct funding of its various research institutes with the goal of forcing them to become self-financing. In response, and with government encouragement, these institutes created new, profit-driven enterprises. To enhance their chances of success, these new enterprises were granted managerial independence and, more importantly, free access to the personal and research findings of their parent institutions. Among the most successful of these new science and technology enterprises were four computer companies: Legend (now Lenovo), Founder, Great Wall Computer, and Stone. Lenovo, for example, was started by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Wong 2006: 67).
These firms were able to rapidly expand and dominate a domestic computer market for two interrelated reasons. They were able to combine innovations related to Chinese language word processing developed by their parent institutions with foreign purchased hardware and technology to produce affordable computers capable of processing Chinese characters (Lu 2000: 4). And, they were able to obtain the needed hardware and technology from foreign firms on relatively favorable terms thanks to state policies that restricted the direct access of these firms to the Chinese market (Wong 2006: 68).
However, in the latter half of the 1990s, pressed by growing banking, inflation, labor, and trade problems, the Chinese government began abandoning its restrictions on foreign access to the domestic market in order to pursue WTO membership (Hart-Landsberg and Burkett 2005a: Chapter 2). The government hoped that membership would promote greater domestic competition which it viewed as key to “a more rapid and more healthy development of China’s national economy” (Branstetter and Lardy 2006: 21).
China’s greater international openness has indeed generated more competition, but the results appear far from beneficial for Chinese development. Foreign companies which had previously focused on exports and/or were forced to operate within the structure of joint ventures are now directly targeting the Chinese market with increasingly negative consequences for Chinese high technology producers.
The cell phone industry provides one example: when Samsung entered the Chinese market in the early 1990s it was forced by government licensing requirements to do so as part of a joint venture with a state enterprise, the Kejian Company. Kenjian, like Lenovo, was created by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1986. Kenjian relied on Samsung’s core technology to produce its phones and also sold selected Samsung phones through its own sales network. For a time, Kejian was even the leading cell phone brand in China. However, with China’s accession to the WTO, Samsung was soon freed from its joint venture obligations. It opened its own wholly owned subsidiary and began directly marketing its own products, quickly winning market share largely at Kejian’s expense (Wong 2006: 82).
The situation has only become worse for Chinese firms:
Cell-phone makers TCL and Ningbo Bird have seen their share of the mainland market whittled down by global giants Nokia and Motorola. Profit margins at telecom equipment makers Huawei Technologies and ZTE have shriveled. BOE Technology Group, the country's biggest maker of liquid-crystal displays used as screens for PCs and TVs, has dumped noncore assets to prop up earnings and is lobbying for a government bailout. Chipmakers Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. and Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., which once hoped to challenge the Taiwanese as world leaders, are limping. "Our greatest challenge is how to turn the company profitable," says Anne Chen, SMIC's Hong Kong representative. (Einhorn 2007: 44)
Heightened internal competition is also taking its toll on the Chinese computer industry. Lenovo (which acquired IBM's PC unit in 2005) remains the largest PC seller in China but is facing a profit squeeze and losing ground to HP and Dell (both of whom are rapidly expanding their own distribution networks); Lenovo’s market share fell from 36 percent in 2006 to 29 percent in 2007 (Bloomberg News 2008). China’s other computer makers (labeled “also-ran computer makers” by Business Week) are in real trouble, including Founder, which used to hold second place in the Chinese market (Einhorn 2008b).
While leading Chinese firms continue to battle for survival in the domestic market, they are largely missing in action as far as high-technology exports are concerned; as noted above, foreign firms account for approximately 88 percent of all Chinese high-technology exports. The computer industry is a case in point. China is now the world’s leading computer producer, assembling approximately 80 percent of the world’s notebook and desktop computers. A major reason is that Taiwanese companies operating as original design manufacturers (ODMs) “dominate worldwide computer manufacturing and have shifted virtually all production to the mainland in the past five years. Taiwanese notebook (laptop) computer makers now manufacture almost 100% in mainland China.... In 2001, this figure was just 4%” (Miller 2006). Reflecting this reality, eight of China’s top 10 exporters are Taiwanese ODMs that supply “branded PC sellers such as Dell with unbranded computers and components” (Miller 2006).
China’s main contribution to this export activity is cheap land and labor. “There are no Chinese ODMs and there are no significant Chinese suppliers to the Taiwanese ODMs, or to their suppliers." And it is unlikely that Chinese computer makers will be able to change this situation. As one industry analyst explained: "No, it's too late. All the major global brands rely on Taiwanese companies and suppliers, who control this part of the supply chain. The market is too mature for new players to enter. The only value added by China is the efficiency it brings to the assembly process, not its own technology" (Miller 2006).
Lenovo’s operations underscore this view. By purchasing IBM’s PC unit, Lenovo instantly became a major player in the global PC market. Yet, this purchase has done little to advance Chinese technological capacities. Lenovo continues to use the same (mainland-based) Taiwanese ODM’s previously employed by IBM and has even moved its headquarters to the United States where it employs U.S. engineers for product development. “If Lenovo is a global player and mainstay of China's export economy today, it is rather a reflection of the domestic computer industry's continuing weakness than of any burgeoning strength” (Miller 2006).
Beyond the immediate (foreign) threat to China’s high technology producers highlighted above, lies a deeper structural problem: China’s reform process has failed to strengthen China’s technological base. As Branstetter and Lardy explain:
the rapidly changing commodity composition of China's exports does not appear to constitute evidence that Chinese firms are leapfrogging ahead technologically, because these exports are not primarily driven by the expanding “knowledge stock” or innovative capabilities of domestic firms. Indeed there may be a growing technology gap between foreign firms operating in China and domestic Chinese companies. In part this is because foreign firms in the electronics and information technology space in China are almost entirely wholly foreign-owned companies rather than joint ventures. Wholly foreign-owned firms have strong incentives to protect their technology from competitors, both domestic and foreign, thus limiting the diffusion of technology to indigenous firms. Furthermore, there is evidence suggesting that many indigenous Chinese firms spend little on research and development to develop new technologies on their own. (Branstetter and Lardy 2006: 40-41)
Perhaps the most important evidence of the failure of the reform process to safeguard China’s technology future is that the drive for international competitiveness has led Chinese firms, especially the leading ones, to delink from the national technology grid. George Gilboy highlights this development and its consequences as follows:
In 2002, Chinese firms devoted less than one percent of their total science and technology budgets (which include technology imports, renovation of existing equipment, and R&D) to purchasing domestic technology. China’s best firms are among the least connected to domestic suppliers: for every $100 that state-owned electronics and telecom firms spend on technology imports, they spend only $1.20 on similar domestic goods. Thus Chinese technology suppliers do not enjoy a strong “demand pull” from the best domestic firms to stimulate their own innovative capabilities; they are relegated primarily to serving rural enterprises and less competitive state-owned enterprises. (Gilboy 2004)
Some Chinese firms, like Lenovo, have already established themselves as major international competitors. No doubt there will be others. But such accomplishments are not an adequate indictor of a successful development policy. A more important indicator is the degree to which a country’s national development capacities are strengthened. And, on this measure, China’s reform policies (despite claims to the contrary) appear to be a failure. The early gains of the reform period—which were largely made possible by accomplishments in the pre-reform period—have not been sustained. As a result, the Chinese economy is slowly but steadily becoming dependent on foreign technology, production, and markets—a trajectory that bodes ill for Chinese working people.
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