China's Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age

In the spring of 1987, the father of China's strategic missile program, Qian Xuesen, told colleagues that China must steel itself for a century of sustained "intellectual warfare." His use of a military metaphor was not a quirk but reflected the unique role of the military in China's emergence as a modern state. The book weaves together four stories: Chinese views of technology since 1950, the role of the military in Chinese political and economic life, the evolution of open and flexible conceptions of public management in China, and the technological dimensions of China's increased power. It explores the powerful role played by the People's Liberation Army and its technical advisers in Chinese economic and institutional debates. But the book primarily explores and explains a paradox. This military approach to technology emerged during China's period of greatest external threat, 1950-69. Yet these policies and management methods persist even as China enjoys perhaps its most benign strategic environment since the 1840s.

About the Author :
Evan A. Feigenbaum, currently serving as a Member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, has taught Chinese foreign policy at Harvard University, where he has been Lecturer on Government in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Initiative in the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of Change in Taiwan and Potential Adversity in the Strait.

Review :
Voted one of the top ten books on Asia in 2003 by Foreign Affairs. "China's Techno-Warriors is an exceptionally well written volume, whose lively literacy helps turn a doctoral dissertation into an informative and meaningful interpretation of the broad course of China's pursuit of high-technology development from the early years of the People's Republic to the present." - China Business Review "[P]acked with solid information and exceptional insights. Feigenbaum's [book] is a masterful review of how military considerations have dominated the development of science and technology in China." - Foreign Affairs "Students of Chinese technical and scientific development owe Feigenbaum a debt of gratitude for so richly constructing the story of China's strategic-technology planners and their organizational and institutional impact." - Journal of Asian Studies "This is a wonderfully multi-dimensional book on a subject about which little has been written. It has the added virtue of making its new material relevant to current academic and policy issues, including U.S. export controls, China's entry into the WTO, globalization, and China's economic and military modernization. Feigenbaum provides a good corrective to the reigning paradigm of Chinese bureaucratic politics that holds coordination to be difficult and largely absent in the process. Instead, he shows how China's 'weaponeers' built a system that was designed to overcome those problems." - David M. Lampton, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University