(EST Pub Date) Science and Technology in Communist CHINA Through 1970

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which they consider essential. Generally speak-
ing, the requirements considered essential are ex-
tremely meager by Western standards.
122. There is no clear-cut division of responsibil-
ity for fundamental and applied research among
the various categories of Chinese institutions, lab-
oratories, and plants that are concerned with elec-
tronics. The responsibilities of institutions and
laboratories often overlap those of manufacturing
installations, which do a considerable amount of
development work. The Fourth Ministry of Ma-
chine Building (formerly the Tenth Bureau, Third
Ministry of Machine Building), and the Ministry
of Posts and Telecommunications are associated
with electronics work. Some studies on electrical
meters is conducted by the First Ministry of Ma-
chine Building.
l23. The task of obtaining foreign prototypes
to .modify or adapt is rapidly becoming easier.
Western (except U.S.) and Iapanese electronics
material, sometimes of the very latest type, is now
readily available to the Chinese; the only limitation
on purchases being China’s ability to pay or to
establish credit and, to some extent, on export re-
strictions. In addition to their use of foreign-made
components, equipment, and systems, the Chinese
place great emphasis on the publication of transla-
tions and abstracts of foreign scientific and techni-
cal books, journals, and the like. This includes a
large body of material from the Soviet Bloc, prob-
ably some “classified” technical data. Much of
this material reaches Chinese electronics personnel
within a year after its original publication. In their
own papers and books, the Chinese generally cite
far more Western publications as references than
they do Soviet Bloc. .
124. From the standpoint of engineering devel-
opment, as well as more fundamental research and
development, no special emphasis appears to be
placed on any particular segment of the general
field of electronics. However, in the case of high-
grade published research (in contradistinction to
technical articles describing some unit, such as an
electron tube), emphasis is placed on 'a
very few
items—semiconductor devices, lasers, masers, para-
metric amplifiers and wave guides. These papers
are an enigma, for the number of Chinese papers is
very small in comparison with the number of papers
published in scientific journals in ]apan and the
West. Yet many are of excellent quality, and such
excellence is not normally associated with a small-
scale technical capability.
125. Engineering development of semiconductor
devices based on Western, Soviet Bloc, and‘]apa-
nese transistors is conducted at a number of plants
scattered throughout the Whole of China. Exam-_
ples of such plants are the Peiping Electron Tube
Plant and the Nanking Electron Tube Plant. The
Institute of Semiconductor Physics (also known as
the Institute of Semiconductors) of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences is the largest center for more
fundamental research on semiconductor devices.
The Institute of Semiconductor Physics is an out-
growth of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy
of Sciences, where a small amount of work on semi-
conductor devices is still done. A large number of
higher educational institutions, such as Peiping
University, Fu-tan University in Canton, and Nan-
k’ai University at Tientsin are also centers of semi-
conductor research.
126. During the last 10 years, approximately 100
papers concerned with semiconductor devices were
published by some 70 authors. The theoretical
work is almost always of high quality and certainly
comparable to that which is found in such U.S.
journals as Physical Review and Reviews of Modern
Physics. '
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127. The Chinese probably profited more from
Soviet assistance in electronics than in any other
field of science. Moreover, electronics seems to
have suffered the least when such aid was with-
drawn. Chinese scientists of this discipline seem
to be far less interested in investigating problems
of basic research that would lead to original de-
signs than they are in copy-manufacturing and
design-modifying foreign equipment, such as tele-
vision cameras, transistorized radio receivers, and
communications components of reasonably good
quality.
128. At the present time at least 70 types of
germanium transistors are manufactured in China
and are in good supply, not only for essential civil-
ian and military purposes but also for use by radio
amateurs, students, and the like. The transistors
include low-power, high-frequency types (100
milliwatt, 100 mc/ s), audio-frequency power units,
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Approved for Release: 2018/01/30 C00659420