Technology transfer in China–Africa relation: myth or reality

Abstract

Technology is one of the serious bottlenecks in African industrialisation. In the discourse about China–Africa relations, technology transfer is one of the less studied subjects. The paper starts at defining ‘technology transfer’. Technological transfer (TT) is an action that the holder of the technology passes the technology of production, management and sale with its rights to others through various ways. In China’s expression, technical cooperation (TC) is usually used instead of expressing the same meaning, since it is significant for China to promote African’s self-development capacity covering various fields as industry, agriculture, management, education and social sectors. The study is intended to study TT in the history of China–Africa relations. The argument is that since the issue of the Eight Principles for Economic Aid and Technical Assistance to Other Countries in 1964, TT has existed in China–Africa cooperation, in different forms, or has different terms i.e. technical assistance, knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing. Yet, there is a large room for the improvement for Chinese companies both in scale and depth if common development is to be achieved.