Entrepreneurship, appropriate technologies and economic development in China

Except in limited academic peripheries, the concept of appropriate technology has never gained a central role in contemporary China's policy-making process. Since the 1950s, high concentration of production sites widely employed unskilled-labor-intensive industries and relatively low-cost technologies. With an impressive economy of scale achieved first in mining and heavy industries and later, since the 1980s, in consumer products sectors such as textile, garment, and food processing, China became the world's manufacturing powerhouse. Big has been beautiful. Meanwhile, thriving entrepreneurship and massive foreign direct investments promoted technologies and knowledge transfer that have enabled the making of small and beautiful white goods and mobile devices, appropriate technologies par excellence that contributed to the country's economic development and people's living conditions. Low-cost technologies have been also used in rural areas with the experiment of biogas digesters and straw waste use, targeted to tackle environmental challenges. In the times of coronavirus pandemic, accelerated climate change, and digitalization, the author argues that the appropriateness of technologies should be reassessed by the degree of their adaptation to social-economic progress and synchronicity with human well-being. More than ever, appropriate technologies should take a pivotal position in the policy debate and implementation for the future socio-economic development, in China and in the rest of the world.