Europe is debating the terms of its industrial surrender
News Source : Semafor.com
News Summary
- Western politicians complain that China achieved its meteoric technological rise through “forced technology transfer.
- In reality, the handover was mostly voluntary.
- US and European CEOs willingly traded knowhow for the promise of market access.
- China outplayed them all.
- It did so, in the first instance, by negotiating the wholesale transfer of Western industrial blueprints on astonishingly generous terms, then by absorbing the knowledge, and now by rapidly iterating on Western inventions.
- That’s the central dilemma now facing policymakers in the US and Europe, struggling to respond to a deluge of Chinese technology exports that threaten rapid deindustrialization.
Andys view It can be easy to forget that, until recently, modern China had precious little technology of its own.
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