科学技術と中国外交

科学技術と国際政治

抄録

Since the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party in late 1978, China shifted its national goal to modernization and has been boldly pursuing the Open Door Policy in order to realize that goal. Especially since 1984 the Open Door areas are expanded to include fourteen cities in addition to Special Economic Zones and the Open Door Polity has been established as the “long term and unchangeable national policy”. In the course of this development there have been some theoretical “breakthroughs”.
For one thing, the theory of “two world markets” which had not been challenged since the time of Stalin was now rejected and the new theory of “the single integrated world market” was proposed (Huan Xiang). Secondly, China started to recognize “interdependent relationship” involving China in the realm of international economy.
In the 1980s China has just started to participate in the international relations of science and technology by taking such measures as full-fledged promotion of technology trasfer from the developed countries. This paper traces thirty years of the zig-zag process culminating in the current stage and examines China's assessment of and response to the new international relationship centered around science and technology as well as the constraints imposed on China's foreign policy by this new international relationship.
China's foreign policy in the realm of science and technology evolved from total dependence on the Soviet Union in the 1950s to “self-reliance” in the 1960s and 1970s, and then to multi-directional cooperation with Western countries such as the United States and Japan.
This paper analyzes the problems concerning the close cooperation with the Soviet Union in the area of military technology and its collapse, the “self-reliance” policy which followed with the consequence of being completely left behind the technological advances of the world, and the introduction of advanced technology from such countries as the United States.
The following are the tentative conclusions of this paper:
(1) Technology transfer can be an effective means of foreign policy for supllier of the technology. However, as the recent U. S. technology transfer to China indicates, bifurcation of the national security concept into military and economic aspects and the conflict between them can be clearly observed in the international and domestic controversy over technology transfer.
(2) The technology transfer is far more irreversible than such economic relations as trade, foreign aid and investment and has long-term impact on both supplier and recipient countries. This is because it involves total transfer of culture, social systems and values. China jointed, on its own initiative, this international current of irreversibility.
(3) The most serious problem for China, that has joined this international relationship of science and technology, is that its own foreign policy, or even modernization policy itself, has to be severely constrained by existing international relations, the relationship of interdependence.
(4) What China is most seriously concerned with, after thirty years of policy fluctuation, is the “exploitation” caused by technological dependence on developed countries and the danger to national security caused by reliance on a single specific country (“leaning to one side”). Therefore, China is likely to try to pluralize the international relations of technology and to choose the paths which will precipitate the transition from imitation to creation of technology.