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AbstractHigh-technology issues have dominated U.S.-China relations in the last years of the twentieth century. In sectors related to national security, allegations of compromising transactions and thefts of proprietary American commercial and military technology plagued bilateral ties in the late 1990s. The apparent transfer of sophisticated space-launch information prompted a congressional investigation of two major U.S. multinationals, Hughes Electronics and Loral Space and Communications. Then, allegations of Chinese espionage at U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories produced a bipartisan Select Committee, chaired by Representative Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), charged with scrutinizing all aspects of U.S.-China technology relations, from corporate technology transfers to academic exchanges of scientific personnel between the two countries.

Renewed interest in China's defence modernization has focused new light on the connection between military goals and national high technology strategy. China is in the throes of a major effort to modernize its arsenal. Its technology planners have begun systematically to build a genuinely national high technology infrastructure that may ultimately enable Chinese defence planners to harness the dual use potential of many new technologies. Yet as scholars and policy-makers raise questions about present patterns and anticipate future trends, it seems more important than ever to take a long look backwards into the origins of the relationship between China's military and its economic development strategy.