Adaptation from the Core, Emerging from the Periphery:The Advantage of Backwardness, Technology Transfer and Industrialization of China

Following the Industrial Revolution in England, and the growth of modern industrialized countries, China became a backward country on the margins of modern civilization. China is now in the midst of transitioning to the industrialized nations. this article analyzes the realities of this great transition from the perspective of Gerschenkron backwardness advantage theory, the essence of the advantage of backwardness is that developing countries have a vast space and strong driving force to learn the technology, systems and successful experience from the developed countries when they carry out their own industrialization and modernization. instead, they have a great advantage in backwardness that encourages them to learn from the developed areas and have the potential to catch up with them. since 1978, China has been focusing on technology transfer in order to make this potential advantage to real economic advantage and get great-leap-forward industrialization, and catching up with the United States as the most advanced industrial economy. so still relatively backward comparing with the United States, despite the rapid development in recent years but these do not show that it will not achieve great progress. The findings show that China has narrowed the technology gap with leading countries, and it is close to the frontier of innovation, so unlike in the past It cannot grow rapidly by adopting and embracing cheap technology from the United States, rather, it must bear the heavy costs of R&D in innovation, So China's economic growth will not be as rapid as it has been in the past four decades.