4

PRC-Based Technology Transfer Organizations

China’s quest for foreign technology goes well beyond the modest efforts to supplement indigenous research that most countries pursue as a normal practice. Rather it is part of a deliberate, state-sponsored project to circumvent the costs of research, overcome cultural disadvantages, and “leapfrog” to the forefront by leveraging the creativity of other nations. This fact is evident in policy declarations, in the scale and variety of transfer operations, and in the number of organizations China devotes to foreign technology acquisition.

Sorting through the list of PRC institutes engaged in technology transfer is a daunting task. On the national level alone, more than a dozen organizations ensure that China has direct and indirect access to foreign technologies and to the scientists who develop them. This figure includes technical ministries focused on particular sectors and dedicated national offices that promote transfer in general. Exempted from the tally are clandestine services, open-source networks, mil-tech procurement offices, co-opted foreign groups and multinationals, whose roles are documented in other chapters.

Local venues complement the national organizations: incubation parks, returnee facilities, conventions for overseas Chinese scientists, liaison offices, and transfer centers that address technology “exchange” at the grass-roots level. Straddling the national and local levels are the sundry outreach groups, alleged non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ranging from technology transfer offices in hometown associations    to sanitized fronts for state-sanctioned operations. This physical network is supported by a digital maze of recruitment websites subsidized by the PRC government. 

Foreign "talent" recruitment offices

Among the many national-level organizations that support technology transfer, the Beijing-based State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs    stands out as the highest formal administrative unit, reporting directly to the PRC State Council. SAFEA’s mission, according to its website, is to facilitate the “introduction of advanced technology and make Chinese industry more competitive internationally” by managing the recruitment of skilled persons from abroad and sending PRC citizens overseas for training.1

At the national level, SAFEA’s direct involvement in recruiting is limited to high-value targets. Mostly it acts on a general, administrative plane to determine recruitment strategy, establish policy, oversee its implementation, provide funding, and monitor the activities of affiliated organizations, including a network of chapters in China’s major provinces and cities. Its role is to “guide, coordinate, and organize national priority programs to recruit foreign specialists, augment the supervision of personnel sent abroad for training, assume responsibility for foreign liaison work to recruit skilled personnel, open recruitment channels, and build relationships with official foreign institutions and other organizations for skilled personnel exchanges and cooperation”.2

SAFEA’s functions are further described as “certifying the qualifications of and providing relevant services to social intermediary organizations in China and abroad” involved in attracting foreign specialists. It is also responsible for “building an information network for recruitment” and maintaining a “comprehensive database” of foreign resources. Its oversight function is affirmed in a director’s message posted to the website, which states that the office annually investigates and certifies “all types of intermediary organizations involved in the international exchange of skilled personnel.”3 Some 80 overseas expert organizations and 73 domestic intermediaries have been accredited by SAFEA to date, which gives some idea of the scale of its operation (and of China’s dependence on foreign technology).

Beyond accrediting other tech transfer organizations, SAFEA runs an “international skilled person exchange service system” that includes a network for matching available talent with PRC domestic programs and an annual “exchange fair” to attract foreign specialists with skills the PRC government deems to be important. SAFEA’s success is reflected in statistics posted to its website that boast of 440,000 “foreign experts” working in China annually, a quarter of a million of whom are from western countries and Japan.4

Unlike other PRC technology transfer institutions that focus on overseas Chinese, SAFEA is more eclectic, drawing support from foreigners of all ethnicities.5 Nor is its recruitment practice constrained necessarily by foreign espionage laws. On November 8, 2006, the FBI indicted Noshir Gowadia, a US citizen and former employee of Northrop Grumman, for divulging military secrets to China.6 Gowadia reportedly arranged through a SAFEA rep to visit China “at least six times” between 2003 and 2005 to hand over stealth-related technology.7

This case is consistent with a recurring theme on SAFEA’s website and in the Chinese tech transfer literature typically, namely encouragement to “use multiple types of recruitment channels”   to achieve the mission. One such posting to the site exhorts SAFEA to “make full use of contacts with governments, exchanges with sister cities, international economic and trade negotiations, international conferences, and like opportunities” to recruit foreign experts.8 Other recommended venues – overseas provincial associations, alumni associations, international friends, academics and advisers with foreign citizenship, and “visiting scholars well disposed toward China” – betray the informal side of its agenda.

Two more themes that define SAFEA’s operations characterize Chinese S&T transfer in general. First, there is no imperative to improve China’s theoretical grasp of science and methodology. The focus is entirely on practical technologies. A typical posting to its site states China’s need for “high level foreign specialists able to solve key technical problems” and commercialize existing technology. Priority must be given to “actual needs” and state-defined projects.9 A second theme, emphasized in SAFEA’s announcements, is China’s need for foreign technology as a “short cut” to national development.

Complementing SAFEA’s aim at foreign experts of all nationalities is the

State Council’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office  , which focuses on ethnic Chinese abroad. In keeping with PRC practice, the office defines “overseas Chinese”   in broad terms that include Chinese expatriates overseas, their dependants and relatives  ; ethnic Chinese in foreign countries who may or may not have lived in China  ; and Chinese who have “returned”   to China (although they may never have been there before).10

OCAO’s mandate to “protect the legitimate interests” of overseas Chinese is interpreted to mean providing them with opportunities to support the growth and prosperity of their ancestral country  . Specifically, Article 4 of its charter authorizes OCAO to “investigate and study the introduction of overseas Chinese funds, technology, and skilled personnel.” This function is localized in OCAO’s Department 4 for Economics, Science and Technology, and is consistent with the office’s mission to mobilize overseas Chinese to support the Beijing government’s priorities.

Department 4’s activities include sponsoring international business innovation and exchange forums, building liaison with overseas Chinese professional groups, and supporting high-tech innovation centers in China staffed by returnees. For example, in 2003 it sponsored week-long conferences in Shenyang, Xiamen, Wuhan, and Nanjing on establishing high-tech firms and exchanging S&T personnel aimed primarily at ChineseAmericans with advanced technical degrees.11 The following year OCAO hosted conferences in Xi’an, Dalian, and other cities, billed as “Face-toFace Meeting with Overseas Chinese Scholars,” “Conference for

Cooperation and Exchange between Overseas S&T Personnel and Chinese Enterprises,” or “Overseas Chinese Enterprises S&T Innovation Cooperation and Exchange Conference.”

In some cases, such as the above, OCAO’s connection with the technology transfer event is overt. In other cases it works through the Chinese Overseas Exchange Association  , an alleged NGO that shares facilities and telephone lines with OCAO and whose Science and Technology Office is staffed by OCAO personnel. Like SAFEA, OCAO operates branches at the provincial and municipal levels to contact visiting overseas Chinese experts and support their involvement in local “innovation centers.”

OCAO’s Department 4 also maintains formal liaison with China advocacy groups abroad, many of which are technology oriented. A 2003 posting to the Chinese Overseas Exchange Association’s website showed members of the US-based Association of Chinese Scientists and Engineers presenting an award to former Department 4 director Wu Hongqin. A year before, the director of the Association of Chinese Scientists and Engineers in France, a group made up of PhDs working in high-tech fields, met the Department 4 director in Beijing to pledge support for developing the “ancestral country.”12

Finally, the two institutions – OCAO and its nominal NGO – sponsor annual “Discovery Trips to China for Eminent Young Overseas Chinese”    aimed at “understanding China, enhancing friendship and seeking common development.” An announcement for the 2008 event, which started in Beijing and ended a week later in Jinan, invited overseas Chinese active in “economy, science and technology” to fulfill their strong aspiration “to visit the hometown of Confucius” while engaging in informal discussions with OCAO leaders and local entrepreneurs.13

Another national organization involved heavily in foreign recruitment is the Ministry of Personnel  .14 The MOP has been running outreach projects to attract overseas Chinese experts since at least 1985, when it began a program of “Financial Support for Returned Scholars Involved in S&T Activities.” The program now has five components to subsidize S&T projects, international exchanges, technology start-ups, priority state projects, and petty expenses.15 There is also a “Subsidy Program for Overseas Chinese Scholars to Return to China for Short Periods to Work in Areas Outside the Educational System” and a separate pool of funds for returned scholars who work in China’s western region.

Three of the MOP’s 12 internal offices engage directly in some form of foreign technology transfer.16 The “Specialized Technical Personnel Management Department”   handles personnel evaluation and other management tasks for specialists returning to China as permanent residents. It formulates policy toward overseas Chinese “returning to serve their country” and helps with logistics, expenses, and the paperwork needed to settle in. In addition, it formulates policy for technical specialists entering or leaving the country and for foreign institutes in China hiring key Chinese personnel. The department has an “Overseas Chinese Scholars and Returning Specialists Division” that gives policy support and service guarantees to returnees working in China.

A second office called the “Talented Persons Mobility and Development

Department”   maintains an “access system” for foreign organizations to enter China’s market for skilled personnel as part of its overall task of coordinating the flow of technical personnel within China. Finally there is an “International Exchange and Cooperation Department” 

 , which runs cooperative personnel programs with foreign

governments and international organizations; coordinates and organizes overseas training for state employees and specialized technical personnel; and manages the selection, sending, and coordination of international staff members.

Beyond these three internal offices, the MOP supervises nine subordinate units, one of which – an “Overseas Scholars and Experts Service Center”    – supports technology transfer by interacting with Chinese studying abroad. The center is an amalgamation of the MOP’s former “Experts Service Center” and the “China Post-doctoral Science Foundation,” which serves as the unit’s name outside China. According to an item posted to the Fujian Overseas Scholars Association website,17 the center is an “important part of China’s integrated personnel resources development system” responsible for attracting skilled personnel to China and serving as an intermediary between “domestic employment units” and “overseas students, institutions of learning, and academic organizations.”

Its external name notwithstanding, the center functions less as a facilitator for academic exchange and more as a scouting and placement office for PRC state labs and high-tech businesses. The scope of its activities is further apparent in its organization, which includes a Returning Overseas Personnel Service Office, a Service Division for Overseas Personnel Founding Businesses, a Post-doctoral Evaluation and Service Division, an Experts Service Division, an Information and Counseling Division, and a Training and Exchange Service Division – all aimed at matching foreign skills to China’s domestic needs.18

Among the tasks it performs for overseas scholars returning to found businesses, the center handles “selection, subsidy cost, and evaluation of their S&T activities.” It hosts a database of available overseas “talent.” It also manages the Science Foundation’s capital, oversees the country’s “post-doctoral research stations” and “company post-doctoral research stations,”19 and provides unspecified “intermediary services.” By late 2002, there were 947 such units operating in China hosting more than 7,000 people.20

Information posted to the MOP website and to its outreach site “China Overseas Talent Network” (www.chinatalents.gov.cn) indicates that the MOP has spent more than RMB200 million in the past 15 years supporting the scientific and technological work of some 4,000 returned overseas scholars and subsidizing another 3,000 overseas Chinese scholars who “return for short periods of service.” This latter group is described as “strongly patriotic” with “superior knowledge and far-flung academic connections.”21

Examples of the foreign skills the MOP hopes to attract may be found on the China Talents website. In December 2005, there was a banner-type ad posted near the top of the site’s home page with the headline “Beijing Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics Invites Talented Persons from All Walks of Life to Join the Alliance.” This was followed by a description of the Institute’s mission in general terms, its facilities, staffing, and the types of skills sought. Details on application and compensation were also provided.

For those unfamiliar with China’s S&T infrastructure, the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics (IAPCM) is China’s premier nuclear weapons modeling facility. According to information provided by the Federation of American Scientists (www.fas.org), the IAPCM “under the Chinese Academy of Science, conducts research on nuclear warhead design computations for the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP) in Mianyang, Sichuan.” While IAPCM also engages in Nuclear Test Ban Treaty-related activities, the skills sought here – including condensed matter physics, fluid dynamics, and computational mathematics – are consistent with the Institute’s primary mission of atomic weapons design.22

In plain language, the MOP was asking ethnic Chinese scientists living abroad to support its atomic weapons program. No clandestine service could ask for more. Also noteworthy was a statement requiring applicants to “cherish the socialist fatherland, support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, and submit to the needs of the country” – a reminder to applicants that they will undergo security vetting. References to the ancestral country   and the lack of an English version indicate that the ad was aimed at overseas Chinese.

The Ministry of Science and Technology

Given the extensive technology transfer activities engaged in by PRC state institutions in general, it is not surprising that China’s Ministry of Science and Technology   also dedicates significant resources to acquiring foreign technology. Formerly known as the “State Science and Technology Commission,” MOST became a full-fledged ministry in 1998 in recognition of the importance China’s leaders place on technological development. The following lines from MOST’s mission statement suggest the role foreign S&T is expected to play in the process:23

[MOST will] research and formulate the guidelines and policies for China’s international cooperation and exchange in science and technology; take charge of bilateral and multilateral governmental science and technology cooperation programs as well as programs related to relevant international organizations; guide the work of science and technology agencies posted abroad; take charge of the selection and administration of science and technology officials posted at Chinese embassies and consulates in foreign countries; manage the work of science and technology aid from foreign governments and international S&T organizations towards China.

MOST’s collection posture abroad included some 135 declared “operational personnel”   posted to overseas embassies and consulates at 60 places in 45 countries as of 1991 and it has grown since then.24 This will be discussed in subsequent chapters that deal with China’s S&T support structures within the United States and elsewhere. Domestically, MOST helped found more than 30 Pioneering Parks for Overseas Chinese Scholars   since 1995 at the National New and High Technology Development Zones  and Innovation Service Centers for New and High Technology   created to exploit (“incubate”) S&T skills brought “back” to China by returnees. These parks are treated in detail in Chapter 8.

Our present focus will be on four internal or affiliated MOST organizations: the Department of International S&T Cooperation , the China Science and Technology Exchange Center 

, the Shanghai Training Center  , and the Service

Center for S&T Personnel Exchange and Development 

 . This last organization is run by the Institute of

Scientific and Technical Information of China – China’s main open-source S&T intelligence service – but is “directly subordinate to MOST’s leadership,” according to the MOST and ISTIC websites.25

MOST’s Department of International S&T Cooperation has offices for planning, international liaison, and individual geographic regions, including an office for “North America, South America, and Oceania.” Its specific responsibilities are:

To study and deliberate programs, policies, and related regulations for international S&T cooperation; organize and implement bilateral and multilateral S&T cooperation plans between governments and related international organizations, and foreign activities such as official S&T cooperative agreements; examine and negotiate important civilian S&T cooperative exchange projects; organize and implement foreign governments’ and international organizations’ S&T aid to China and Chinese S&T aid abroad; guide the work of [Chinese] S&T institutions stationed abroad, maintain contact with foreign governments’ and international organizations’ S&T structures in China, as well as the S&T work of the Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions and Taiwan.26

This sweeping mandate establishes MOST as China’s leading body for official S&T exchanges worldwide, while formalizing its supervisory role in private interactions as well. In addition, the International S&T Cooperation Department has authority over 47 municipal and provincial “Science and Technology Commissions” or “Science and Technology Provincial Government Departments”  , whose missions are heavily biased toward acquiring foreign technology and expertise.

The Shanghai Commission’s program is typical of these second-tier MOST organizations. Among its responsibilities are leadership of the city’s high-tech industrial R&D districts, which are populated largely by foreigninvested firms and start-ups run by returned scholars; managing S&T foreign affairs and international S&T cooperation; participating in international S&T cooperative events; reviewing applications from foreign

S&T personnel for cooperative ventures; “studying means to increase S&T investment through multiple channels and to optimize S&T resources” (code words for informal foreign tech transfer); and promoting “conversion

of S&T results”  .27

This last function is discharged, in the Shanghai example, by a Shanghai

New and High Technology [Achievements Conversion] Service Center   , the bracketed terms are omitted from its formal English title). The Center is commissioned by the Shanghai municipal committee (and ultimately by MOST) to evaluate technologies in terms of national policy and expedite their transfer to domestic firms.28 A Chinese study of these transfer centers describes their function as “coordinating the R&D abilities of each company, research institute and university” in the locale so as to “convert advanced foreign technology into domestic innovative ability” in key areas where challenges are faced.29 The study recommends “making technology transfer even more the core feature of our technology innovation.”

What is evident from these examples is MOST’s role across the entire transfer process: from policy formation to conversion of foreign know-how into equipment and capabilities. The other point that stands out is the value it places on American technology in particular. In a document entitled “An Outline of SinoUS Technology Cooperation,” MOST asserts “anyone with eyes can see” that the United States is the most scientifically developed country in the world. The corollary offered a few lines later is “other countries undoubtedly can draw lessons from America’s S&T policies, management structure, planning and investment, areas of key scientific research, and the successes that it has attained.”30

Complementing MOST’s International S&T Cooperation Department is its quasi-independent China Science and Technology Exchange Center. Founded in 1982, some 16 years before the S&T Ministry itself, the Center has an internal structure similar to the S&T Cooperation Department’s and responsibilities that overlap. The chief difference is the persona it presents to the international community, the Center being nominally a people-topeople organization, which facilitates MOST’s membership in international groups, such as the Tokamak consortium (ITER). The Center itself describes its role as “promoting cooperation in the fields of science and technology and economy between Chinese and foreign scientists.”31

The Center’s “main responsibilities are to take charge of foreign personto-person science and technology exchanges and cooperation within the Science Ministry’s purview and under the direction of nationally unified foreign policies, general and specific, including S&T exchanges with ethnic Chinese of foreign citizenship.” In his introductory greeting on the website the Science Minister acknowledges the Center’s important contributions “in opening venues for people-to-people international S&T exchange, expanding the stages for S&T exchange and cooperation, bringing in large amounts of advanced technology and intellectual resources, and training a large number of internationalized    S&T personnel.”32

The Center manages foreign personnel exchanges in both directions. By August 2002, the most recent year for which statistics were posted, it claims to have “led in”   some 4,376 foreign experts, mostly from the United States and Japan, to “shrink the gap” between Chinese and world technology. Meanwhile, it sends on average 11 teams of technical “trainees” abroad per annum. Ten such missions were listed in 1998, each with 20 to 30 people, targeted at the US, Europe, and Japan. Like its formal counterpart – the Department of International S&T Cooperation – the Center runs a network of 30 second-tier organizations at municipal and provincial levels called “foreign science and technology exchange centers”   that focus on the people-to-people dimension of tech

transfer.33

Two more offices – MOST’s Shanghai Training Center and the Service Center for S&T Personnel Exchange and Development – also support the ministry’s efforts to harvest foreign technology. The Training Center was set up under the Exchange Center’s management in 1982 to train S&T “administrators”, particularly those involved in overseas exchange missions and other types of “scientific and technological foreign affairs.” The facility, a self-contained complex located within Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hitech Park, offers language instruction in English and Japanese alongside its curriculum in “S&T systems” management. Some 20,000 people trained there as of 2005.34

MOST’s Service Center for S&T Personnel Exchange and Development was created in 1993 to keep track of the whereabouts and activities of China’s “S&T talent,” especially “mobile personnel”  , i.e., graduates, post-docs, and visiting scholars not permanently identified with a PRC institution. Through the use of databases, the Service Center maintains files on available personnel and brokers their distribution among research facilities and work units. It also provides unspecified “professional training” presumably in the exploitation of foreign S&T literature that its host organization – ISTIC – professionally gathers.35 

Other national-level organizations

China’s Ministry of Education  , which sets policy for the country’s primary through graduate schools, is focused to an extraordinary degree on sending Chinese students abroad and insuring the skills they acquire find their way “back” to China. These tasks are the particular responsibility of the “International Cooperation and Exchange Department”  , which manages the education system’s overseas activities, including dealings with international bodies and foreign governments. The department makes policy and does overall planning for Chinese studying abroad and foreigners studying in China; manages the hiring of foreign professors; approves cooperative institutions and projects related to education; and guides the work done by education offices at Chinese ministries abroad.36

The MOE in addition works several incentive programs to expedite acquisition of foreign high technology. Among them is the “Spring Light”   program, which pays overseas Chinese scientists and engineers to

“return for short periods of time and render services to the country”   in key S&T areas, for compensation up to five times one’s normal overseas salary.37 The program has been in effect since 1996. Foreign technology gets transferred through seminars, cooperative exchanges, technical consultations with state-owned enterprises, and “other short-term activities that involve returning to China for service approved by the MOE or its offices (teams) in embassies (consulates) abroad.”38 Some 20,000 persons have passed through the program to date.39

The Changjiang Scholar Award Plan   began in 1998 and is aimed at creating professorships for returning scholars. There is a “China

Scholarship Council”   affiliated with the MOE that provides financial assistance to students going abroad and to foreigners studying in China “for projects conducive to the development of China.” Eleven ministries and national bodies are on the Council, including the Ministry of Public Security and eight organizations with links to China’s tech transfer projects.40 The MOE is also involved in an “R&D Start-up Fund for Overseas Scholars Returning to China” designed to cut down on the time needed for returnees to begin their “creative” R&D efforts. It organizes annual transfer conventions in Beijing and Guangdong. It also sponsors other, unspecified “projects to pass on technology”  from abroad.41

In a note posted to the MOE website, Zhang Xiuqin, head of the International Cooperation and Exchange Department, describes another initiative – the “Three First-rates”   plan to choose first-rate students and send them to first-rate universities abroad to study with first-rate professors. The plan sprang from a State Council “strategic initiative” in 2003 to upgrade the skills of Chinese S&T workers and attract highly talented overseas personnel to China. Previously PRC universities and research institutes sent students abroad to meet what Zhang called “shortterm needs.” The emphasis now is on long-term strategic goals. Zhang expressed confidence that China’s economic growth will attract more students back, adding that those who stay abroad nevertheless “can do many other things for the country.”42

Finally, according to a policy document posted to the MOE site,43 the ministry is building a database on overseas Chinese scholars to match China’s needs for specific technologies with the pool of overseas talent and to keep better tabs on its foreign-trained nationals from PRC embassies and consulates abroad. The ministry will also arrange for personnel from Chinese universities and labs to travel to countries with a high density of ethnic Chinese professionals such as the United States and – under MOE auspices – track them down  , discuss with them opportunities to support PRC high-tech projects, and find ways to enlist their support. It also intends to strengthen “connections with and leadership of overseas student academic organizations and associations” as a bridge to recruit persons of talent.44

The Chinese Academy of Sciences  , founded in 1949, is an umbrella group for 108 scientific research institutes and more than 200 S&T enterprises. Its staff of 30,000-plus “research professionals, technicians, administrators and other permanent employees” is matched by an equally large number of “guest researchers, visiting scholars, postdoctorates, graduate students and other mobile staff.”45 The foreign component of CAS’s membership is also supplemented by “international” scientists permanently elected to the body, and through the Academy’s sponsorship of cooperative visits by scholars abroad. These visits numbered 29,530 in 1986 to 1990; 33,881 in 1991 to 1995;46 and they now run to some 8,000 trips annually.47

CAS technology transfer programs resemble in content and name transfer programs run by other state equities, which sometimes trip over each other in their efforts to attract foreign talent.48 For example, the CAS’s “100 Persons Plan”   aims to “draw in, select and nurture” leading scholars and technical personnel. Between 1994 and 2000 some 470 people were supported. Fewer than half were in China when the awards were made. Between 1994 and 1997 its annual cost was RMB 60 million; by 1998 the “100 Person Plan” was spending RMB 200 million on 120 people per annum, and during the Tenth Five-year Plan (2001-2005) its annual budget increased to RMB 300 million.49

The “China Youth Scholar Academic Forum”   has been jointly administered by the CAS and Natural Science Foundation of China since 1991. Its goal is to “strengthen academic exchanges and contacts between young domestic scholars and Chinese scholars abroad” with emphasis on the latest R&D trends to “further the development of the ancestral country’s science and technology.”50 Each year seven or eight events are organized. There are also a “Western Lights Plan” , a

“High-level Visiting Scholar Plan” , a “CAS Preferential Support Fund for Returning to China to Work” , a “CAS Wang Kuancheng R&D Scholarship” , and a

“Special Fund for Overseas Scholars to Return to China for Short Periods to

Work and Lecture”   that CAS also runs with the NSFC. In addition, the Academy funds a group of “Expert Overseas Evaluators”   and is building an Internet-based “overseas personnel management system.”51

Supervising these projects is CAS’s International Cooperation Bureau  , whose responsibilities, according to the CAS website, are:

To formulate CAS rules and regulations for international cooperation and academic exchanges; make annual plans aimed at academy-level international cooperation; conduct negotiations, signing ceremonies and the administration of CAS cooperative agreements with overseas partners; explore new channels for exchanges and cooperation with foreign organizations; and manage major international cooperative projects of CAS and its affiliates.52

The Bureau boasts over 700 cooperative agreements with 40 nations worldwide, including “joint investigations, joint ventures, joint laboratories, young scientist groups, workshops, training courses, bilateral and multilateral seminars.”53

The Natural Science Foundation of China   partners with CAS on some projects but has its own “Bureau of International Cooperation”   that is independent of the CAS body.54 According to its charter, the office is authorized to draw up cooperation and exchange projects, including those involving overseas students, arrange funding, and negotiate agreements with foreign governments. The NSFC’s website lists 66 such agreements designed to “produce results   and persons of talent.”55

Beyond programs run jointly with CAS and other bodies, the NSFC manages a “National Outstanding Youth Science Fund”  , which by 1999 was spending 180 million Yuan annually or 20 percent of the foundation’s budget. A second youth program started in 1998, called the

“Young Overseas Scholars Cooperative Research Fund” 

 , underwrites foreign support for PRC projects in

science. The program has a separate budget for Hong Kong. A Chinese language study of these NSFC programs credits them with building “a stable foundation in China for cooperative exchanges with overseas scholars and creating beneficial conditions for serving the country through use of the ‘two bases’   model.”56

Documents posted to the NSFC site describe this “two bases” model as encouraging overseas Chinese scholars to remain abroad in their regular jobs but to return to China for short periods to work.57 To qualify for subsidies under this formula, candidates must have a “permanent or relatively stable overseas work post, run their own [overseas] lab or research team, and have their own independent research budget.” They must travel to China at least 30 days a year – either once or as accumulated over the year – and have clear and settled research projects with their domestic counterparts. A complementary NSFC plan drawn up in 2007 subsidizes efforts by “domestic research units” to attract foreign scientists to work in China for longer periods.58 

Provincial and municipal organizations

As noted above, several of China’s national-level technology transfer organizations control networks of local affiliates. Beijing’s State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs works through its public liaison organization and program executor – the China Association for the International Exchange of Personnel   – to recruit foreign experts and send PRC citizens abroad. Its provincial and municipal offices, named after one or the other of these two parent groups, grew from 45 three years ago to their present number of 51. More will be said about CAIEP later under “private” outreach groups.

The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, also discussed above, has 30 provincial-level offices that include four large municipalities59 and another 63 local offices for other cities.60 These latter offices belong nominally to

OCAO’s affiliated NGO – the Chinese Overseas Exchange Association 

  – which, like CAIEP and its relationship to SAFEA, fronts

for the OCAO. Most of these 93 local organizations have “economics and S&T” departments modeled on OCAO’s “Department 4 for Economics, Science and Technology” to work technology transfers with overseas Chinese.

The Shanghai chapter of the OCAO, for example, promotes and facilitates “S&T exchanges and cooperation with overseas Chinese professional groups and individuals.”61 The chapter claims to have attracted some 4,000 overseas Chinese technical persons, who spawned more than 400 enterprises primarily in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-tech Industrial Zone, winning praise from China’s State Council for “drawing in intellect” from abroad. In 2006 the OCAO designated parts of the Zhangjiang zone priority support areas for returning Chinese founding businesses and conducting exchanges “of various types”  .62

The Science Ministry as well has regional offices throughout China under various rubrics depending on their affiliation with particular MOST departments. One such office – Shanghai’s chapter of the International Science and Technology Cooperation Department – was described above. These MOST chapters are not reticent about describing their plans to use foreign persons and technology, both generally and for specific projects. A statement on the Beijing Municipal S&T Commission’s website notes:

Being fully aware of the globalization of S&T activities, BMSTC opens its arms to all the government institutions, enterprises and NGOs worldwide who are seeking opportunities for S&T cooperation, and, together with its affiliates, readily provides a full range of support and services.63

MOST and the regional offices of other national organizations work in tandem with local governments on projects to obtain foreign technology, and typically defray part of the costs incurred by municipalities, for example, in subsidizing the high-tech zones that cater to overseas specialists. City and provincial governments also work independently to attract foreign talent. In 2000, the city of Beijing created a so-called “green channel”  64 to reward foreign specialists who set up shop locally. The city’s Overseas Scholars Service Center   a part of its personnel department, has helped large numbers of returnees establish hightech firms in Beijing’s Haidian, Daxing and Konggang industrial parks.65

Other examples of local projects to attract foreign S&T personnel may be found in every major PRC province and city. Shanghai’s Office of Personnel manages its own Overseas Scholars Service Center in the city’s Pudong New District to provide a “full range” of incentives for Chinese specialists living abroad to work and set up businesses in Pudong, or to engage in “other forms of exchange and cooperation.” Information posted to its website indicates that more than 7,000 returnees had set up some 800 businesses there by the end of 1994.66 China’s Xinhua News Agency noted that:

The center mainly serves as an intermediary agency for recruiting students for S&T programs, employing students abroad, designing an overseas project exchange information network, holding international large recruiting business activities, and implementing international hightech exchanges and trade standards [italics added].67

Guangzhou, for its part, has an “Overseas Scholars S&T Innovation Fund”   that provides financial subsidies for returning scholars to “convert the results”  of new and high technology brought in from abroad. Many recipients have set up local businesses with support from the

Guangzhou Overseas Scholars Innovation Service Center 

 .68

In addition, Guangzhou has been hosting since 2000 a “Convention of

Overseas Scholars in Science and Technology”  .

Although billed as an annual event, this and other foreign-oriented hightech fairs are semi-permanent features of Chinese cities and, in Shenzhen’s case (see below), evolved into what one study called a “year round operating technology transfer center.”69 Planning begins well in advance of the formal event, which itself lasts several weeks. The events typically are supported by the local municipality and one or more national ministries.

The Guangzhou Convention, China’s largest tech fair for overseas Chinese, has as its goal “bringing to China knowledge and technology obtained overseas and opening opportunities for overseas Chinese to establish high-tech enterprises in China.”70 Its inaugural event in December 2000 attracted 300 foreign participants, half of whom were from the United States, who brought technical specifications for 158 items.71 The number of attendees has grown through the years, with the 2003 conference attracting 1,532 overseas Chinese affiliated with 16 foreign-based advocacy groups.72 By 2004 some 2,200 “overseas Chinese scholars”  73 were gathering at Guangzhou’s Pazhou convention center to meet 2,000 PRC “national and local delegates” from China’s technical ministries, labs, universities, and high-tech parks to “exchange” technical products, skills, and services.74

Foreign participants, according to the website, are motivated to attend by the opportunity to market in China the knowledge, skills, and high-tech products they acquired and developed while abroad. Domestic institutions, for their part, bring to the Convention lists of skills and technologies sought by China. The conference provides the physical and electronic venues for the exchanges to take place. Wrap-ups of the event are posted on the Convention’s website, including an account of the transactions, which in 2004 included such items as “digital signal processor design,” “remote site surveillance cameras,” and “manufacturing technology for super-high performance rare earth permanent magnets.”75 The slogan for 2008 “Open to the world, serving the whole nation” captures its one-way nature.

Unlike the Guangzhou event that seeks technologies owned or appropriated by individual overseas Chinese, Shenzhen’s “High-tech Fair”    attracts international participants of all ethnicities

and is company-rather than people-oriented. In operation since 1999, the fair is the largest, most influential, and “most richly pragmatic”  S&T convention in China, offering “multi-level, multi-directional and specialized ancillary services for high-tech achievement transactions.” The value of exchanges reaches into the billions of dollars.76 It is co-sponsored by the Shenzhen city government and half a dozen national ministries, and run by Shenzhen’s China Hi-Tech Transfer Center, one of many such transfer facilities in China.

There are also lesser events convened at intervals to attract foreign talent and technology, such as the “Overseas Chinese Scholars Business Founding Week”   held annually in major Chinese cities. Some insight into their workings is provided by Japanese professor Endo Homare, director of foreign programs at Tsukuba University, whose status as a China-born Japanese and history of support for PRC exchange programs has earned him privileged access to these conventions and their organizers.77

Endo describes one such transfer venue in Shenyang he attended in 2001 that attracted hundreds of overseas Chinese. Prior to the meeting, the event’s municipal sponsors asked the region’s major companies, research institutes, and labs to fill out “tender invitation forms for difficult problems”   that were posted online in advance of the gathering. OCS worldwide were asked to peruse the list and contact the lab or company in advance with their proposed solutions. By Endo’s account, the list “went on and on for some 40 pages.” Labs with the “difficult problems” reviewed their responses and chose the best solutions. Final terms were negotiated at the Convention.78

Endo cites by way of an example a request from a PRC nanotech company for “extremely specific and detailed knowledge of a technology.” The request included an appeal: “Please lend us the latest advanced technology so we are not defeated in the post-WTO competition.” Endo considered it “amazing” that a local government would appeal openly to the Chinese community worldwide for a “loan” of foreign technology, adding, “I suppose the Shenyang government did not consider the possibility that anyone besides Chinese would read it.”79

At another such convention in Dalian sponsored by the Science, Education, Personnel, and Foreign Affairs ministries with support from the Liaoning provincial and Dalian municipal governments, some 7,000 locals turned up to greet 1,080 overseas Chinese scholars. Endo summarized the opening address:

You have all taken advanced degrees abroad, are at the leading edge of science, and are acquainted with market economics. Many of you have your own companies and patents. You have international social networks and are deeply versed in all kinds of information 

 . Most importantly, you are deeply concerned with your ancestral

country and bring a strong determination to contribute.

More encouragement followed, after which the facilitator importuned, “All of you, please, in whatever way you can, make good use of your inventions, research results, and experience to set up innovative enterprises in Liaoning.” The ceremony, according to Endo, was conducted with great pomp: individual signatories who agreed in advance to contribute were escorted to the stage by “tall women in evening gowns.”80

That done, the groups were bused off to signing ceremonies where these

Chinese bearers of Western technology inked formal agreements with their PRC sponsors. Some 1,556 letters of intent were exchanged between the overseas Chinese and their PRC recipients, and 359 contracts were signed. Appeals to “patriotism” were thick. The event ended with the groups singing the PRC National Anthem, performed by the guests “with tears in their eyes.”81 

Technology transfer centers

Technologies obtained abroad must be converted into real equipment and products. In China, this process is played out through several venues: in high-tech development zones where tenets with a knowledge of foreign technology found businesses with government support; in face-to-face meetings between technology owners and Chinese company reps; in working-level meetings at international symposia; in debriefing rooms maintained by government tech transfer organizations; and at dedicated “transfer centers” all over the country.

Some three dozen major transfer centers and many more affiliated units were operating in China by early 2008. Several have branches overseas, including the Jiangsu International Technology Transfer Center with its office in the United States. The following account of their goals is given on the TT91 website, a “science and technology transfer information service provider” run by Shanghai’s Zhonglin Science and Technology Transfer Co., Ltd.

National Technology Transfer Centers are established to speed up technology transfer, encourage the use of advanced technology to rebuild traditional industry, hasten development of new and high tech industries in China, and optimize China’s industrial structure. They do this by mobilizing the technologies of universities and labs, talented persons and other resources and linking up with priority industries and companies in a three-way alliance of businesses, universities and research institutes. Their major task is to pave the way for the development and expansion of openly available technology   , support the creation of technology centers within companies, and promote conversion and transfer of technologies held by higher education.82

This description fails to point out that nearly all these centers, alongside their domestic activities, engage in international tech transfer, as evidenced by information posted to their websites and as attested in the previously cited 2003 PRC study on China’s tech transfer centers, which describes their mission to convert “advanced foreign technology” in areas where challenges are faced, such as information, electronic, chemical, biological, material, and manufacturing technologies.83

Shanghai alone has ten such transfer centers. There is the Shanghai New High Technology Service Center mentioned above run by the city’s municipal committee with MOST support “to provide effective technology conversion services.” The center offers one-stop shopping   for government and business customers alike. It studies foreign tech standards, maintains a cadre of evaluators, and manages matching funds used for products “recreated through the conversion process [emphasis added].”84 A second Shanghai-MOST venture, the Shanghai Technology Transfer Exchange  , supports “theoretical and practical” international

transfer activities based on a technology bank of 10,000 projects.85

The Shanghai National Technology Transfer Center  

 , a part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was founded in 1950 and is the oldest and probably largest such organization in Shanghai with some 7,500 employees staffing 18 laboratories, nine “research” institutes, and half a dozen offices in nearby coastal cities. The institution claims many conversion successes in such high-tech fields as microelectronics, lasers, and nuclear technology.86 Complementing the National Academy’s efforts, the Shanghai Academy of Sciences has its own tech transfer center   that claims expertise in “dual-use” military technology

and patents exploitation.87

Continuing our survey, the Shanghai-based East China (Huadong) University of Science and Technology  operates a National

Technology Transfer Center with an International

Cooperation Office responsible for “bringing technology into the country.”

It focuses on transfers to PRC companies, “large ones in particular.”88 The Center claims to have cooperative links with 60 research institutes in the United States, Europe, and Japan.89 A second university-affiliated National Technology Transfer Center at Jiaotong University puts small and mediumsized businesses in contact with technology providers at home and abroad, and “organizes international symposia in high-tech fields” for its constituents.90

Zhonglin Science and Technology Transfer Co.   is a semi-private corporation in Shanghai providing technology transfer “solutions”   for local firms, government and research institutes. The company includes returned overseas students and “professional associations of ethnic Chinese abroad” among those with which it has “good cooperative relations.”91 Another is Shanghai’s Co-Way International Technology

Transfer Co.  , run by a consortium of private, municipal, and academic interests. Co-Way’s staff is made up almost entirely of technical persons who have studied abroad. The company researches foreign technology “trends” and brokers interactions between domestic firms and foreign technology providers in Europe and the United States.92

Rounding out the collection are two more entities: a China-Europe Technology Transfer Center   that has been operating since 1993,93 and a hybrid organization called the Shanghai International

Technology Transfer Network  , a web-based platform

run by several of the above-mentioned units.94 This pattern of technology transfer centers is duplicated in other major cities such as Beijing, Shenyang, Guangdong, Dalian, and Xi’an, and at the provincial level as well. They constitute one more component of China’s multi-faceted effort to absorb foreign technology.

China's "non-official" transfer organizations

Foreign-based advocacy groups also play a key role in the transfer process. These groups are formed in the main by overseas Chinese to create business opportunities for themselves and to promote development of their ancestral country. As we shall see in the following chapter, foreign S&T advocacy groups interact directly with PRC state organs to achieve shared goals and there are cases where their members hold advisory posts in the Chinese government. In addition, Beijing promotes and monitors “people-to-people” transactions through a network of NGOs that insulates overseas specialists serving China as individuals or through advocacy groups from the potential risks of dealing openly with the PRC government.

Three such organizations were mentioned above in the context of their state counterparts. The China Science and Technology Exchange Center has overlapping responsibilities with MOST’s International S&T Cooperation Department and replicates its internal structure. Two other alleged NGOs, the China Association for the International Exchange of Personnel  and Chinese Overseas Exchange Association 

, front respectively for the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, and at one time shared offices, staff, and telephone lines.

According to a description posted to the China Internet Information Center,95 CAIEP is a Beijing-based, non-official “government-sponsored” institution founded in 1985 to support the “international exchange of specialized technical and managerial personnel.” CAIEP has chapters in 45 Chinese provinces and cities, and offices in ten countries including the United States. Its stated goal is to recruit foreign experts to work in China and send people abroad for technical training. Specifically,

It invites experienced foreign specialists to China to solve technical and management problems for Chinese industry; invites foreign professors and scholars to Chinese universities and research institutes to lecture and engage in cooperative research; and sends Chinese technical personnel abroad to develop exchanges, receive training, and do research.96

Beyond efforts aimed at individuals, CAIEP “acts as a bridge to promote understanding, international cooperation, and skilled personnel exchanges between relevant organizations and groups in China and abroad” through cooperation with “more than 60 government institutions, social groups, research institutes, universities, and corporations worldwide.”97 Examples of macro-level recruitment initiatives include: a “Sino-US Symposium on Hi-Tech and Economic Development” held in Houston in 2002;98 an “International Executive Council” co-sponsored with the US government to “provide volunteers with technical and management expertise to manufacturing and service companies in China”;99 and an “International Human Resources Forum” co-hosted by SAFEA, CAIEP, and China

Services International (a division of CAIEP with offices in Beijing’s Zhongguancun).100

The link between SAFEA and CAIEP is apparent in their co-hosting of national events, the co-appearance of representatives of the two organizations at foreign functions, the dual roles assigned to key employees, and in Internet citations that name CAIEP as being “under the direct guidance” of SAFEA.101 Hence in practice there is no distinction to be made between cooperating with the one or the other. Foreigners entering SAFEA/CAIEP’s technology transfer program are lodged at the large and modern Beijing Foreign Experts Building, and, if needed, are assigned CAIEP translators to support their exchanges with technical experts.102

Similarly, the Beijing-based China Overseas Exchange Association identifies itself as an NGO founded in 1990 to “interact extensively with overseas Chinese, ethnic Chinese abroad and their organizations, promote friendship, and develop cooperative exchanges.”103 It also encourages Sinoforeign exchanges in economics, trade, science, and technology. In structure and operation the group is hard to distinguish from its counterpart in the State Council.

COEA is managed by six vice-directors, each of whom holds a concurrent position in the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, according to biographical data posted to its website. The organization’s true status is also evident in the membership of its standing committee: most of the 79 members hold top posts in a related PRC state bureaucracy, such as the OCAO, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, MOST, and the State Bureau of Foreign Experts. Like its official counterpart, COEA operates a Department for Economics, Science, and Technology headed by the same OCAO manager.

COEA’s tech transfer function is located within that department’s Science and Technology Office, which “is mainly responsible for rendering help and service to support cooperation and exchange between Chinese scientists and engineers at home and abroad.” COEA claims many successes in “attracting funds, technology, and skilled personnel to China.” It is also involved in “various kinds of cooperative talks on foreign business and technology” with backing from official PRC entities engaged in tech transfer.104

A fourth major “unofficial” group supporting technology transfer to

China is the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese    or Qiaolian  , a “national NGO under the leadership

of the Chinese Communist Party composed of returned overseas Chinese and their family members” which serves as “a bridge and a link connecting the party and government with the broad masses of returned Chinese, their family members, and Chinese compatriots abroad.”105 Qiaolian traces its origin to a “Yan’an Overseas Chinese Save the Country Federation” formed in 1940. In 1956 it gained formal status as a national organization.

A close association between Qiaolian and the State Council’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office is suggested by the co-appearance of members in delegations traveling to and from China and by the revolving-door relationship its leadership has with the OCAO. A Japanese source notes, “Although Qiaolian is an NGO, in the Chinese system it is a unit on the same formal ministerial level as OCAO (its officers correspond to Japanese cabinet members in rank).”106 If there is any difference at all between

Qiaolian and the OCAO (and its unofficial counterpart the COEA) it is the emphasis Qiaolian places on “returned Chinese” and their links to expatriates still abroad.

Another measure of Qiaolian’s status is the number of its subordinate groups – some 11,000 at the regional and local levels. Its internal structure includes a Liaison Department, which gathers “real time information” on returned Chinese, and the expected Economics, Science and Technology Department chartered to “promote economic cooperation and scientific and technological exchange between Chinese compatriots abroad and China.”107 The success of its technology exchange mission is reflected in examples posted to its website and in Internet citations of Qiaolian’s involvement in transfer forums.108 Other types of exchanges include the group’s sponsorship of a “Volunteer Corps of Outstanding Overseas Scholars in Service to China,” whose members are chiefly from the United States.109

No list of China’s tech transfer groups is complete without CAST – the China Association for Science and Technology   – “the largest national non-governmental organization of scientific and technological workers in China,” according to its website.110 Although accredited as an NGO with the United Nations and other international bodies, CAST’s status is betrayed by statements such as the following:

As the bridge linking the Chinese science and technology community with the Communist Party of China and the Chinese government, CAST is a constituent member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, where it joins the nation’s political parties and other social groups in the state affairs of political consultation, policy-making and democratic supervision.111

CAST is run nominally by a National Committee, actually by a Secretariat of five members who make the executive decisions. Chief among them is Deng Nan, daughter of former CCP leader Deng Xiaoping, supported by four others with S&T and international backgrounds. One of them, Feng Changgen, is employed by the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics 

 , the Mianyang-based atomic weapons design facility, in its Laboratory for Shock Wave Physics and Detonation Physics Research.

CAST includes among its tasks – about 80 percent down the list in the spot typically reserved for key elements of a Chinese discourse – a requirement “to organize international science and technology exchanges, promote international cooperation, and develop friendly relations with the international scientific and technological community.” This function is discharged by a Department of International Affairs and a “service center” called the “China Council for the Promotion of Applied Technology Exchange with Foreign Countries.” In addition, CAST’s nearly 200 member societies have bilateral agreements with 40 foreign organizations in 20 countries, with particular emphasis on the United States, Europe, and Japan.112

Other Chinese non-governmental organizations devoted to foreign tech transfer include the China Association for International Science and

Technology Cooperation  , a national non-profit organization founded in 1992 under the science ministry with participation from CAST and other national groups, which acts as “an extension of and supplement to the government’s foreign S&T work.”113 The Overseas Doctor of Philosophy Association  , with a dozen chapters abroad including three in the United States, “complements and assists the State Council’s departments, committees, and the various provinces and municipalities’ beneficial activities to make the country prosper through science and technology.”114 It aims to focus the strength of Chinese scientists abroad to make China a “marvel” in world S&T.115 Finally, the China Education Association for International Exchange  , with its technology-oriented agenda, serves as a “non-governmental network for Chinese international educational exchange.”116

Recruiting and placement networks

Technology transfer is also achieved through web-based services or by organizations that exist mostly on the Internet. At the basic level they act as conduits of information to Diaspora Chinese with technical skills and as rallying points for government initiatives. At the other extreme are state-run websites for linking overseas experts with PRC projects.

An example of the former type is China Scholars Abroad (www.chisa.edu.cn). Established in December 1995, Chisa claims to be “China’s first Internet-based news medium and nationwide, comprehensive website for overseas scholars.” It is registered in Beijing and maintained by the editors of a paper journal with the same Chinese name – Shenzhou Xueren   – although the electronic and paper publications have different content. China’s Ministry of Education has supervisory control over both versions.117

Chisa offers online “news” about China aimed at mobilizing overseas Chinese support for government themes and programs. More particularly, it provides information on academic funding (including technology-oriented scholarship programs), study abroad, academic exchange programs, study in China (for those who read Chinese), job offers in the PRC, and government policy on overseas study and incentives for returning. There is detailed information on China’s “pioneering parks”   and hotlinks to Chinese student associations worldwide.

A similar web-based service is the China Overseas Students and Scholars

Pioneer 118 operated by the Chengdu Gaoxin Center of Technology Innovation .119 Established in 2001, the site is supported by Chisa’s editorial staff and its content is defined by MOST and MOE. Like Chisa, COSSP offers information on PRC business law and policies and keeps overseas Chinese apprised of opportunities to found tech-oriented businesses in China.

The World Overseas Chinese Professional Association Cooperation Network   is an online almanac for technology transfer information run by OCAO’s Department 4 for Economics, Science and Technology.120 OCPAN provides data on job opportunities in China, transfer-related project funding, cooperative projects planned and under way, exchange conferences in China and abroad, state policy directives, and hotlinks to nearly 100 member   organizations worldwide with news on their current activities.121

Online placement services also play an important role in bringing technical skills to China. An example is the China International Employment Net ( , chinajob.com.cn), run by SAFEA and its front organization CAIEP. Its purpose is to “utilize foreign resources to satisfy the needs of domestic employers for foreign talent.”122 Another example is China Human Resources (  www.chinahr.com), “a talent finding and personnel resources management service for PRC and foreign companies.” Founded in 1997, China HR has its headquarters in Beijing, 12 brick-and-mortar offices in China, and a “professional staff of over 1,000 persons.” A partnership in 2005 with Monster Worldwide, Inc. allowed

China HR to “enter an entirely new stage of international development.”123

China’s ministries operate several web-based services aimed at facilitating the movement of technical personnel to and from China. The

MOE’s China Education and Research Network  , an online collaboration venue for PRC universities, has global links to the United States, Japan, and Europe. Its public site (www.edu.cn) offers an upbeat assessment of S&T developments in China, a calendar of international events, job announcements, funding opportunities, and hotlinks to PRC research institutes for the benefit of overseas specialists contemplating cooperative exchanges. Its introductory statement emphasizes the importance of “technology import” to China.124

The MOE also runs a Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange 

 , a web-based service “to promote worldwide scholarly interaction, facilitate the movement of students to and from China, and help keep tabs on the whereabouts and activities of Chinese students overseas.”125 The Center, in turn, controls a Beijing Yinhong Technical

Developing Consultant Center   engaged in international “talent hunting” and tech transfer. The latter claims as one of its goals “turning [China’s overseas scholars] into a practical type of expert whose talents are used internationally.”126

The China Overseas Talent Network  , www.chinatalents.gov.cn), run by the MOP, traces its genesis to former Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s call to “draw in foreign intellectual talent and encourage personnel studying abroad to return home to work or serve their ancestral country by appropriate means,” according to the website. The site links ethnic Chinese experts abroad with the “overseas Chinese student work organizations in various regions and departments throughout China, its higher institutes of learning, Chinese R&D institutes, large and medium-sized companies, and overseas scholar pioneering parks.” The website hosts information on policies and regulations, guidelines for returning students, an online form for persons requesting specific types of employment in China, a form for PRC work units seeking overseas talent, an employment “hotline,” and a venue to help overseas Chinese market their high-tech projects in China.127

MOST, for its part, hosts a China International Science and Technology Cooperation website ( , www.cistc.net) that provides S&T news to the overseas community; a calendar of global cooperative events; information on patent laws, trademarks, S&T policy, and techno-park regulations; a positive account of Chinese history and culture for scientists planning travel to China; and information on how to get there.128 Part of the site gives details on successful Sino–foreign technology projects, two recent ones being biosensors (Israel) and precision ion-deposition processes (Belgium).

Finally, the Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurs and Professionals Association    is primarily a web-based organization

(www.returnchina.org) devoted to promoting China’s high-tech development. Founded in February 2002,129 OCEPA claims 3,200 members worldwide and is chaired by a person living in Xi’an, China. Other leaders live at US and UK locations or claim dual residences, such as Silicon Valley and Hangzhou, or San Antonio and Dalian. The organization acknowledges the “guidance”   it receives “from China’s Ministry of Personnel and the San Francisco Consulate.”130

OCEPA recruits overseas Chinese scholars “who studied and worked in Western countries and moved back to China” and others “who still work and live overseas but are interested in jobs, business opportunities, or conferences with airfare allowances in China.” Its “purpose is to provide network and support opportunities in and out[side] China for business and academic exchanges.” The website explains:

We are also working closely with Science and Technology Parks, Technology and Business Incubators, government agencies and local governments, and venture capital firms [in China] to create a network to promote exchanges on business ideas, tips and information.

With representation both in China and abroad, OCEPA bridges the PRC “outreach organizations” specialized in technology transfer and the complementary US “advocacy groups” that we examine in the following chapter. While our account here of PRC tech transfer organizations is lengthy, we have no confidence that it is exhaustive. Entities expand, new ones appear, while others – including those run by technical ministries – stay mostly beneath the radar. Details about their transactions are often unavailable.

What emerges from the foregoing is an appreciation of China’s efforts to gather foreign technology on a scale that outsiders cannot begin to fathom. By contrast, those on the inside managing these transfer projects take their acceptance for granted, as if they cannot imagine anyone objecting to their appropriating the world’s technology, or that the developed world would notice. In the next chapter we explore how this apparatus links up with US groups, whose sympathy for China’s goals allows these transfers to happen.

Notes

1 www.safea.gov.cn.

2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid.

5 Photos posted to its site (2009), however, show a predominance of ethnic Chinese among therecruits. A comprehensive study in 2001 of China’s use of overseas talent noted that “in recent years” SAFEA has expanded its target from non-ethnic Chinese to “the intellectual resources of ethnic Chinese experts abroad” (Liu and Shen, 2001).

6 Peter Boylan, “Isle man gave China stealth tech, feds say,” The Honolulu Advertiser,

November 9, 2006, http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Nov/09/ln/FP611090349.html.

7 Mark A. Kellner, “China a ‘Latent Threat, Potential Enemy’: Expert,” Defense News Weekly, December 4, 2006, www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2389588&C=america.-

8 www.safea.gov.cn.

9 Ibid.

10 www.gqb.gov.cn.

11 According to information posted to the New England Chinese Information & Network Association’s website, www.necina.org.

12 www.asicef.org.

13 www.gqb.gov.cn/special/2008/1029/19.html.

14 The Ministry of Personnel was renamed “Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security”   in 2008. Individual offices described in this chapter survived the

transition.

15 According to information posted to its website, www.mop.gov.cn, in 2005.

16 Ibid.

17 www.forsa.org.cn, visited in 2005.

18 www.mop.gov.cn.

19 , respectively. The former is sometimes rendered

“centers for post-doctoral studies” and the latter is sometimes translated as “post-doctoral project work stations.”

20 According to an interview with former Minister of Personnel Zhang Xuezhong posted to thewebsite headhunting.job.365.net.

21 www.chinatalents.gov.cn.

22 A similar advertisement was posted to the recruitment page of the IAPCM’s own website(www.iapcm.ac.cn, visited December 6, 2005) with some details on specific projects, many of which are weapons related. They include nonlinear evolution equations, infinite dimension dynamic systems, and under “computational mathematics” numerical solutions to nonlinear evolution equations, computational fluid dynamics, calculation methods for transport equations, numerical modeling of fluid dynamic instability, numerical modeling of explosions, and high-performance parallel computing.

23 www.most.gov.cn.

24 Liu Yun   and Shen Lin   (“The Current Situation and Countermoves on Development and Utilization of Overseas Chinese Experts Intellectual Resources”) in   (Science Research Management) 22, no. 4 (July 2001), pp. 115–125.

25 www.most.gov.cn, www.istic.ac.cn.

26 www.most.gov.cn.

27 www.stcsm.gov.cn.

28 www.hitec.net.cn.

29 Sun Lijun   and Huang Huaye  

(“US and Japanese Technology Transfer Practices and What We Can Learn for Our Country’s Technology Transfer Centers”), in   (Keji Guanli Yanjiu), 2003.1, pp. 70–72.

30 www.most.gov.cn. The document goes on to describe the size of the USG’s research budget, the particular sectors within which advanced research is carried out, what technologies are earmarked for funding, and which USG offices have roles in the nation’s R&D effort. Its assessment of the Sino–US S&T relationship is mixed. It notes that cooperation is “comprehensive, multi-lateral, broad-based, widely partnered, done in key areas, and on a high level, as evidenced between governments, R&D institutes, companies, and the exchange

of S&T personnel.” At the same time, there are some “issues and inadequacies. In particular, non-S&T factors still commonly interfere with normal development of the two countries’ S&T cooperation and exchange. Limitations that the United States puts on cooperation and trade with China in high technology have impeded broader and deeper Sino-US S&T cooperation.” 31 www.cstec.org.cn.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 www.most-training.org.

35 www.istic.ac.cn.

36 www.moe.edu.cn.

37 David Zwieg, Chung Siu Fung, and Donglin Han,“Redefining the Brain Drain: China’s Diaspora Option,” Science, Technology & Society 13, no. 1 (2008), pp. 1–33.

38 Liu and Shen, 2001.

39 www.huiguo.cn.xbpd/index.htm.

40 www.csc.edu.cn/gb.

41 Liu and Shen, 2001, p. 117.

42 According to Zhang, her office solved the problem of getting Chinese students into top-notchschools by negotiating 45 “cooperative project” agreements between the China Scholarship Council and famous foreign universities.

43 “MOE’s Views on the Work of Further Strengthening the Introduction of Talented Overseas

Scholars”   March 2, 2007.

44 Ibid.

45 News item posted to the CAS website, viewed 29 February 2008.

46 Lian Yanhua   (“An Assessment of the Growth of Scientific

Research Globalization”), in   (Science Research Management), July 2000, pp. 1–14.

47 http://english.cas.ac.cn, visited February 28, 2008.

48 “The demarcation between the responsibilities of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and theState Science and Technology Commission [predecessor to MOST] in policy formulation and consultation is not always entirely clear, and there is a certain degree of ambiguity and contention in their dealings with each other” (“State Science and Technology Commission,” Federation of American Scientists Space Policy Project, June 20, 1998), www.fas.org/spp/guide/china/agency/sstc.htm.

49 Liu and Shen, 2001.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid.

52 www.cas.cn.

53 Ibid.

54 The NSFC Bureau’s present director, Han Jianguo  , spent most of his earlier career in the CAS’s Bureau of International Cooperation.

55 www.nsfc.gov.cn.

56 Liu and Shen, 2001, pp. 117–118.

57 www.nsfc.gov.cn.

58 Ibid.

59 www.gqb.gov.cn.

60 www.chinaqw.com.cn.

61 www.overseas.sh.cn.

62 qwb.sh.gov.cn.

63 www.bjkw.gov.cn.

64 Ibid. The program is authorized under “Certain Regulations by Beijing Municipality to Encourage Overseas Scholars to Come to Beijing, Found Businesses and Work”  

 .

65 Liu and Shen, 2001, p. 119.

66 www.pudongos.com.

67 Beijing Xinhua in English 1416 GMT, November 11, 2003.

68   (Science Research Management), 2001.4a, p. 119.

69 Can Huang, Celeste Amorim, Mark Spinoglio, Borges Gouveia, and Augusto Medina, “Organization, programme and structure: an analysis of the Chinese innovation policy framework,” R&D Management 34, no. 4 (2004), pp. 372–375.

70 www.ocs-gz.gov.cn.

71 Endo Homare,   (When China Links Up with Silicon Valley).

Tokyo: Nikkei BP, 2001, p. 55.

72 www.ocs-gz.gov.cn.

73 Literally “personnel who have studied or are studying overseas.” The translation “overseasChinese scholars” is the standard translation used in China’s English-language publications; “OCS” is the acronym used at the event and generally.

74 According to information posted to www.ocs-gz.gov.cn in March 2005.

75 Ibid.

76 www.chtf.com.

77 Endo, When China Links Up with Silicon Valley.

78 Ibid., pp. 208–209.

79 Ibid., pp. 210–212.

80 Ibid., p. 222.

81 Ibid., p. 238.

82 www.tt91.com/jishu.asp.

83 Sun Lijun   and Huang Huaye  

(“US and Japanese Technology Transfer Practices and What We Can Learn for Our Country’s Technology Transfer Centers”), in   (Keji Guanli Yanjiu), 1 (2003), p. 72.

84 www.hitec.net.cn/structure/aboutus/jgjj.

85 www.technology4sme.com.cn.

86 www.nttc.ac.cn and www.tt91.com/zhuanyi/zhuanyi004.htm.

87 www.tt91.com/zhuanyi/zhuanyi006.htm.

88 www.tt91.com/zhuanyi/zhuanyi001.htm.

89 nttc.ecust.edu.cn/org/org_list.asp.

90 www.tt91.com/zhuanyi/zhuanyi002.htm.

91 www.tt91.com/zhuanyi/zhuanyi015.htm.

92 www.tt91.com/zhuanyi/zhuanyi013.htm.

93 www.coatren.cn/memberabout/luqiangsppc.html.

94 www.sittnet.cn.

95 www.china.org.cn.

96 www.caiep.org.

97 Ibid.

98 www.chinajob.com.cn.

99 www.internationalexecutive.org.

100 www.chinajob.com.cn.

101 www.china.org.cn.

102 www.internationalexecutive.org.

103 According to COEA’s Overseas Chinese Network (Zhongguo Qiao Wang) website www.chinaqw.com.cn.

104 Ibid.

105 www.chinaql.org.

106 www.melma.com.

107 www.chinaqw.com.

108 www.ccba.bc.ca.

109 www.bjql.org.cn. Qiaolian’s leaders applauded them for coming to China “for research” and reminded them of their importance to China’s S&T development.

110 www.cast.org.cn.

111 Ibid. CAST’s constitution also affirms, “The China Association for Science & Technology(hereinafter referred to as CAST) is a mass organization of Chinese scientific and technological workers, and a bridge to link scientific and technological workers with the Communist Party of China and the Government.”

112 Ibid.

113 www.caistc.com.

114 www.codpa.org.

115 www.acp-atlanta.org.

116 www.ceaie.edu.cn.

117 According to an undated posting on www.chinaedunews.com.cn, read in May 2008.

118 www.cossp.gov.cn.

119 www.cdibi.org.cn.

120 OCAO’s role is not acknowledged on the site. Under “contact” information is listed Guo

Wenwei  , who also appears on the Chinese-American Association of Engineering’s   website with the same phone and an OCAO email extension (gqb.gov.cn). A

reference on CAST-LA’s site identifies Guo as an employee of OCAO’s Department 4 (www.cast-la.org/archive/2008/02/GQB_Class.doc).

121 www.ocpan.org.

122 chinajob.com.cn.

123 www.chinahr.com.

124 www.edu.cn/introduction.

125 www.cscse.edu.cn.

126   (www.cscse.edu.cn/publish/portal0/tab40/info15.htm).

127 www.chinatalents.gov.cn.

128 www.cistc.net.

129 OCEPA was originally the Association of Chinese Entrepreneurs and Scholars    with a website at www.sinoaces.org and a Yahoo! group at

sinoaces@yahoo.com.

130 www.returnchina.org.