TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 181 ity, and an agonizingly slow response to problems as they arose. Bauer recites these shortcomings over and over, interspersing them with continual complaints about living accommodations, travel ar rangements, and the harshness of the climate. This endless carping becomes tedious, especially when it is mixed with patronizing state ments about his hosts, for example, “The Chinese are a happy, gen tle people. Artistry is their finest talent” (p. 102). Is it possible that Bauer is completely ignorant of China’s historic scientific and techno logical legacy? I also grew impatient with Bauer’s narratives of his junkets to vari ous parts of China. They are familiar travelers’ tales, and they add nothing to the substance of the book. Of equally dubious value are his rehashes of stories that originally appeared in Western maga zines and newspapers. Many of them are tangential, and in any event they have been covered with greater insight and thorough ness elsewhere. The narrative is also occasionally marred by factual errors, as when Machimpex, China’s machine-importing agency, is identified as the agency responsible for machine building (p. 120). After recounting his frustrations over China’s slow rate of technol ogy absorption, Bauer curiously ends on an optimistic note. Signs of progress had become evident, as when Chinese mechanics did a first-rate repair job on a damaged wing section. More generally, after years of Maoist misrule, the policies initiated by Deng Xiaoping have given China its greatest opportunity for economic and technological advance. On the final page, Bauer concludes that “The naysayers have taken a short view of history”—an interesting conclusion to a book that indulges in a great deal of naysaying. Bauer is at his strongest when he narrates his personal experi ence in overseeing the modernization of China’s commercial jet fleet. Students of contemporary China will find some intriguing pas sages in this book while being put off by its irrelevancies and repeti tions. Those concerned with technology transfer will be presented with some useful insights, but they will need to consult other sources in order to gain a fuller appreciation of the general context of technological change in China. Rudi Volti Dr. Volti is professor of sociology at Pitzer College and author of Technology, Poli tics, and Society in China (Westview Press, 1982). Technical Progress and Soviet Economic Development. Edited by Ronald Amann and Julian Cooper. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell , 1986. Pp. viii+214; tables, notes, index. $45.00. Soviet economic development was traditionally based on the strat egy of “extensive growth.” Under this approach, increases in out put depended heavily on increases of inputs of primary resources—labor, natural resources, and capital services. During 182 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the last decade, it has become clear that it is impossible to sustain this strategy because of natural resource depletion, demographic changes, and the painful sacrifice of consumption required to keep the capital stock growing faster than output. Soviet and East Euro pean leaders are accordingly seeking a transition to an “intensive strategy of growth” in which technological progress and other productivity-enhancing changes are to substitute for dependence on massive increases in inputs. How successful they will be in mak ing this switch is the question of the day for USSR watchers. This book offers some useful background and insights on the issue. It brings up-to-date and extends some of the work on Soviet in novation and technical progress conducted over a number of years at the University of Birmingham and reported in earlier volumes coedited by Ronald Amann. Two new technologies analyzed here are microcomputers and single cell protein. The conclusions of the general update confirm conventional wisdom regarding the level and pace of advance of Soviet technology. The Russians do manage to move forward in established technologies, are coming closer to Western quality standards in some areas, and have made significant progress in introducing even the newest technologies, such as micro processors and computers. But overall, innovative forces in the So viet economy are weak, the creation and introduction of new technologies are slow, and generally the Soviet economy does not seem to be closing...