Bangladesh should learn from China’s technological rise, but not copy it

We’ve all heard the phrase—“China is not living in the future. It is the future.” In many ways, it is a literal truth. The influx of robot taxis, the automation craze, and the skyscrapers in Shanghai racing each other to the clouds certainly point that way. For many economies in the Global South, it is also a blueprint. But the most tempting lesson to draw from China’s technological miracle is also the most misleading: build a few futuristic industrial parks, announce an artificial intelligence strategy, import advanced equipment and wait for transformation to follow.

The truth is that technology does not work that way. China’s progress was not produced by slogans, isolated megaprojects or a handful of celebrated companies. It emerged from decades of investment in education, infrastructure, manufacturing, scientific research, supplier networks and state capacity. If Bangladesh wants to follow China, it should study that system carefully,instead of attempting to reproduce China’s model wholesale.

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China’s technological advance can now be measured across almost every major field. In 2025, for the first time, China entered the top 10 of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index. It also hosted 24 of the world’s 100 leading innovation clusters, more than any other country. Its research and development spending reached about 2.8% of gross domestic product in 2025.

These achievements are visible in industries that did not become globally competitive overnight. China is now the world’s main electric vehicle manufacturing centre. Chinese factories accounted for about 40% of global electric car exports in 2024, while more than 11 million electric cars were sold in the domestic market that year.

The first lesson for Bangladesh, therefore, is that technological progress is built through the accumulation of capabilities.

A country cannot become an artificial intelligence power merely by buying servers. It needs reliable electricity, affordable broadband, secure data systems, advanced mathematics education, skilled technicians, competent managers and companies capable of turning research into products. It also needs universities that reward inquiry rather than memorisation and financial institutions that can distinguish a promising investment from a politically connected borrower.

Bangladesh should begin not with the question, “Which fashionable technology should we adopt?” but with a more practical one: “Which national problems can technology help us solve?”

The answers are already around us. Bangladesh needs higher productivity and cleaner production in the garment industry. It needs better crop forecasting, irrigation management and cold-chain systems in agriculture. It needs affordable medical diagnostics, efficient ports, safer roads, flood modelling, renewable energy management and digital public services that work outside Dhaka.

This is why Bangladesh must develop its own model. It does not have China’s vast domestic market, financial resources or administrative machinery. It must therefore be selective, frugal and outward-looking.

Rather than attempting to manufacture everything, Bangladesh should choose a limited number of technological missions linked to existing economic strengths and urgent social needs. Each mission should bring together universities, private companies, government agencies and technical institutes. Public money could support research grants, laboratories, testing facilities, apprenticeships and early-stage procurement. 

But support should be conditional. Firms receiving subsidies, cheap credit or tax benefits should have to meet measurable targets for exports, productivity, training, research or environmental performance.

China demonstrates how a determined state can coordinate infrastructure, finance and industry. Bangladesh can learn from that coordination without turning industrial policy into permanent protection for favoured businesses.

The distinction is crucial. A productive industrial policy rewards companies that learn, invest and compete. A corrupt industrial policy rewards access to power. The first builds industries; the second creates monopolies and bad loans.

Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to the second outcome. The World Bank has warned that many of the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises face high regulatory costs, unreliable infrastructure and limited access to finance. The IMF has also identified weak revenue collection, banking-sector vulnerabilities and governance problems as major constraints on investment and growth.

Under such conditions, directing large volumes of credit towards fashionable technology projects could produce waste rather than innovation. A politically backed semiconductor factory, for example, may generate impressive headlines while consuming scarce capital, imported machinery and electricity without developing a competitive supply chain.

Bangladesh should instead make it easier for thousands of ordinary firms to adopt existing technologies. Most productivity gains will not come from spectacular inventions. They will come from factories using better machinery, farmers receiving accurate weather information, shops adopting digital accounting, logistics companies tracking goods and government offices sharing data securely.

Innovation policy must therefore reach beyond technology parks and startup conferences. It should include shared engineering facilities, product-testing laboratories, cloud services, cybersecurity support and affordable financing for smaller firms. It should also help businesses obtain international quality and environmental certification, enabling them to enter more demanding export markets.

Education remains the foundation of any credible strategy. Bangladesh needs more than additional computer science graduates. It needs competent electricians, machinists, laboratory technicians, agricultural specialists, product designers and mathematics teachers.

Technical and vocational education should be linked directly to employers and modernised continuously. The Asian Development Bank’s current skills programme identifies mechanical engineering, electronics, information technology, construction and food and agriculture as important technology clusters. That approach should be expanded through apprenticeships and partnerships between colleges and industry.

Universities should receive competitive research funding, but results must be transparent. Promotion should depend more on credible scholarship, teaching and practical innovation, and less on seniority or administrative influence. Bangladeshi researchers abroad should be offered visiting appointments, joint laboratories and clear routes for collaboration without being required to return permanently.

A realistic national innovation compact could set a gradual target for raising public and private research spending, concentrate resources on a few national missions and publish annual scorecards showing what taxpayers received in return. Failed experiments should be closed. Successful ones should be expanded. Such discipline is central to genuine innovation.

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s recent visit to China has renewed interest in what Bangladesh can learn from the Chinese development experience. The June visit widened discussions beyond infrastructure and trade to investment, technology, education, healthcare and skills development, while presenting China once again as a significant partner in Bangladesh’s search for a new phase of economic growth.

But China’s most useful lesson for Bangladesh is the architecture of progress. Technological leadership grows from an environment where education, research, finance and production reinforce one another.

Bangladesh can start from a path that has already been mapped. It can move according to its own resources, institutions and national priorities. It can choose fields where local knowledge creates an advantage and where innovation improves everyday life. The country’s universities can become more than places that award degrees. They can become laboratories for national development, partners of industry and engines of a more productive economy.

China invested in that ecosystem for decades. Bangladesh’s opportunity begins with the same insight: before a country produces world-class technology, it builds institutions capable of producing world-class knowledge.