In order to understand fully China’s impact on global markets, it is essential to take into account its technological obsession. Its inability to latch on to the path of the Industrial Revolution brought about a century of submission and humiliation beginning with the first Opium War in 1840. Having learnt a lesson, China’s leaders do not want to lose out on the information revolution.
According to the Organisation of European Co-operation and Development (OECD), China invested $136bn in technology in 2006, second only to the US ($330bn), after over taking Japan ($130bn). This amounts to 4.9 per cent of China’s GDP ($2,600bn). Not only is China a producer of technology in-house, it also buys – and copies, according to many foreign businesses – technology from outside its borders.
