ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a summary of part of the research work being done for a doctoral thesis at Sussex University, England. The main part of the thesis is concerned with the detailed study of the growth and development of a science-based industry, the instruments sector, in China, from 1949 to 1972, and involves an analysis of the many issues met in establishing a high-technology industrial sector in a developing country. The most important instrument producers in the capitalist world are France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. These same countries are also the major users of instruments, because of their high technological levels, the size of their research and development systems and their sophisticated industrial system. Both countries in the late 1940s had a small number of workshops producing very simple instruments and doing elementary assembly and repair work, and neither had a firm basis on which to build a modern instruments industry.
