ABSTRACT
What can explain the path China has taken to develop the world’s largest ICT industry? This book shows that the development of the industry has been a unique process, although it shares some superficial resemblance with the East Asian model and has exhibited similar rapid export and production growth after opening up. The most controversial aspect of China’s rise in the global ICT industry, as with all other East Asian countries, is the role that the state has played. Chapter 3 showed a type of extreme ‘developmental state’ under the central command regime in the early development period. Market mechanism and private ownership were completely replaced by state planning and ownership. As the country faced trade embargoes and military threats from Western countries and the USSR, the Chinese communist government naturally responded by building an independent and integrated industrial system, which, it was hoped, would allow the country to develop heavy industries quickly and so strengthen the military sectors. Centralized state control was essential for Chinese leaders to allocate resources to ‘strategic’ sectors.
