Benjamin Nathan Kletzer

My research project seeks to explain how Soviet technological transfer pushed economic development in the People’s Republic of China. My hypothesis is that Soviet engineering advisors and imported technology were combined with pre-war Japanese infrastructure and technologies to build the modern economy of Northeast China. I think that the rapid heavy industrial growth experienced in China in the 1950s (at the height of Sino-Soviet cooperation) was driven by effective technological transfer and imported engineering knowledge, rather than the simple application of Soviet-style economic policies. Using case studies of several key cities in the Northeast, I will demonstrate that technological knowledge combined with on-the-ground experience built productive industrial centers.