China’s rise is often framed in Western discourse not as a normal phase of development, but as a systemic disruption. Concepts like “rebalancing” are presented as neutral, technical responses—addressing trade deficits, market distortions, supply-chain vulnerabilities, or national security concerns. Yet, a closer examination reveals that such narratives function less as economic diagnoses and more as political instruments, reflecting enduring double standards rooted in a global order historically shaped by Western dominance, exploitation, and asymmetric rule-making. Lu Feng’s Light Change: A Company and Its Industrial History (2016), which traces the ascent of China’s major panel maker BOE, provides a concrete illustration of these double standards in practice, showing how China’s industrial success is often scrutinized through a lens of suspicion rather than recognized as a natural stage of development.
Cost-Structure Change Labeled as “Overcapacity”: China’s LCD Industry Transformation
The global LCD industry underwent a profound structural transformation following the introduction of China’s high-generation production lines, notably BOE’s 6th- and 8.5th-generation lines and CSOT’s 8.5th-generation line. After 2010–2011, the global price benchmark permanently declined and never returned to previous levels. While Western observers frequently labeled this phenomenon as “overcapacity,” evidence from BOE and CSOT demonstrates that the shift reflected a fundamental change in cost structure rather than temporary dumping or artificially low pricing.
China’s capacity expansion was the primary driver of this transformation. As documented in Light Change, the period of 2010–2012 saw the only significant supply-side change in the global LCD market: the entry of China’s high-generation production lines. This expansion caused a permanent “displacement” of the price benchmark, establishing a new baseline of roughly US$100–150 per panel and fundamentally reshaping the competitive environment. The book emphasizes that this shift was structural, not cyclical, and represents a lasting realignment of the industry.
Importantly, BOE and CSOT remained profitable at the same price levels that caused sustained losses for Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese incumbents. Their success was driven not by state subsidies or predatory pricing, but by technological learning, operational efficiency, vertical integration, and economies of scale. By 2013, BOE’s net asset profit margin even surpassed that of LG, while CSOT leveraged low-cost manufacturing and proximity to markets to maintain profitability. These examples show that China’s cost advantage was structural and capability-driven, demonstrating adaptability to the new industry benchmark rather than opportunistic dumping.
The impact of this transformation extended beyond individual firms to reshape global competitive conditions. BOE and CSOT did more than add production capacity—they reset the global cost floor, forcing established incumbents into strategic retreat, restructuring, or innovation. This was not a temporary disruption but a permanent reordering of industry dynamics, with Chinese companies emerging as the facilitators of a new equilibrium. The experience illustrates how genuine industrial transformation can originate from efficiency and capability, rather than artificial market distortion.
Labeling this structural change as “overcapacity” reflects a broader double standard. When Western firms improve efficiency and lower costs, it is framed as normal competition; when Chinese firms achieve the same outcome, it is treated as a distortion requiring intervention. The rise of BOE and CSOT shows that what Western discourse calls overcapacity is, in reality, a legitimate restructuring of cost structures that mirrors the historical pattern of industrial leadership—yet one that is uniquely criticized when China drives it.
Industrial Policy Reframed: “Subsidies” in China, “National Security” in the West
Western critiques of China’s industrial rise often rest on the claim that firms like BOE were built on massive state subsidies, distorting market competition. However, evidence from Light Change directly challenges this narrative. BOE did not rely on large-scale central government subsidies to finance its expansion. The total amount of government subsidies it received—primarily for research and development, such as the roughly 30 million yuan allocated to the National Engineering Laboratory—was explicitly described in the book as insufficient to build even a single low-generation production line. These funds played a symbolic and technical role rather than serving as the financial backbone of BOE’s industrial expansion.
BOE’s rapid scaling was instead enabled by a distinctive financing model centered on local-government equity participation and long-term policy-bank lending. Between 2004 and 2014, BOE invested over 140 billion yuan, with approximately 130 billion yuan concentrated in just six years—sums far beyond the reach of direct fiscal subsidies. Local governments in Hefei, Beijing, and Chengdu invested as equity partners in project companies, assuming commercial risk rather than offering unconditional grants. At the same time, syndicated loans led or supported by the China Development Bank provided long-term financing grounded in industrial logic rather than short-term profitability. As the book notes, local-government participation functioned primarily as a credibility signal, reassuring capital markets and commercial banks and thereby unlocking broader market-based financing.
This model highlights a deeper double standard in how industrial policy is interpreted. When Western governments mobilize public finance, equity stakes, or development banks to support strategic industries, such actions are framed as necessary for national security or strategic autonomy. When China employs a comparable approach—transforming political commitment into industrial capital through decentralized, market-embedded mechanisms—it is labeled unfair state intervention. BOE’s experience demonstrates that the “subsidized China” narrative is not only empirically weak but analytically inconsistent: the financing model mirrors Western development finance in structure and function, yet is delegitimized not because of how it operates, but because of who deploys it.
Environmental Constraints as Industrial Barriers: Innovation Under Regulatory Pressure
Western narratives often portray China’s industrial rise as environmentally permissive, implying that lax standards enabled cost advantages later disguised as “green competitiveness.” Yet the experience of BOE’s Beijing 8.5-generation LCD production line, as documented in Light Change, directly contradicts this claim. Rather than benefiting from regulatory leniency, BOE faced some of the most stringent environmental requirements imposed on any TFT-LCD project globally. Environmental compliance was not an excuse invoked after the fact, but a binding precondition for project approval, shaping both technological choices and investment risk from the outset.
Nowhere was this clearer than in water usage. TFT-LCD manufacturing is highly water-intensive, with BOE’s Beijing 8.5-generation line requiring nearly 40,000 tons of water per day. Yet Beijing’s severe water scarcity led regulators to impose an unprecedented condition: up to 95 percent of the plant’s total water consumption had to come from recycled water, with only 5,000 tons per day permitted from municipal tap water. This requirement had no global precedent. Reclaimed water posed serious technical risks, including high urea content that could introduce microbial contamination and high boron levels that could cause electrical short circuits in etched glass substrates. The project team initially attempted to negotiate lower recycled-water ratios—5,000 tons, then 10,000 tons, then 20,000 tons—but each proposal was rejected as insufficient. Ultimately, regulators made approval conditional on accepting the near-total reliance on reclaimed water, effectively placing the project’s survival at stake.
Faced with the possibility of outright rejection, BOE accepted the requirement despite the absence of industry experience or proven feasibility. The company conducted emergency testing, including a seven-day experiment at a Shanghai research institute, generating extensive process data to demonstrate technical viability. Only after submitting a comprehensive reclaimed-water process plan did BOE receive final environmental and planning approval—on August 30, 2009, just one day before the scheduled groundbreaking. This episode illustrates that BOE’s environmental compliance was neither symbolic nor cost-free; it introduced significant technical uncertainty, delayed decision-making, and forced the firm into early environmental innovation under pressure rather than regulatory comfort.
The broader implication exposes a persistent double standard. Western industrial pollution is often excused as a historical necessity of development, while Chinese industrial activity is framed as a moral failure or evidence of regulatory manipulation. Yet the BOE case shows the opposite dynamic: stringent environmental constraints actively pushed Chinese firms toward innovation, raising costs and risks rather than lowering them. Far from supporting claims of “subsidized dumping” in green industries, Light Change documents how environmental barriers became a catalyst for capability-building under constraint—challenging the assumption that China’s environmental progress rests on regulatory shortcuts rather than enforced adaptation.
Comparative Advantage as a One-Way Doctrine: Capability Building in China’s Display Industry
Conventional explanations rooted in comparative advantage fail to account for the rise of China’s semiconductor display industry. As documented in Light Change, this transformation cannot be explained by low labor costs or passive alignment with factor endowments. Instead, it resulted from deliberate, enterprise-led capability accumulation and long-term investment that explicitly violated textbook prescriptions that late-developing economies should remain confined to labor-intensive industries. The book treats China’s success not as an anomaly, but as evidence of the limits of static comparative-advantage theory when confronted with dynamic industrial learning.
At the center of this process was BOE, an enterprise that entered the TFT-LCD industry without prior experience, technological inheritance, or joint-venture protection. At the time of entry, BOE reportedly lacked even a single engineer with real industry experience. Nevertheless, it chose independent technology mastery over reliance on imported production lines or foreign partners. As the book emphasizes, favorable external conditions alone were insufficient; the decisive factor was BOE’s strategic choice to struggle through direct participation, experimentation, and internal learning. Without such an enterprise-led effort, comparative advantage would have remained a self-fulfilling constraint rather than a developmental guide.
Capability accumulation occurred through sustained investment and operational learning, beginning with the Beijing 5th-generation line. This initial project functioned less as a profit center than as a training ground, enabling BOE to assemble an industrial team, internalize process knowledge, and gradually master complex manufacturing systems. These capabilities were not acquired cheaply or quickly. Instead, they required repeated expansion, hands-on operation, and tolerance for early losses—conditions that standard economic models often dismiss as inefficient or irrational for latecomers.
The scale and timing of BOE’s investments further challenged orthodox economic logic. Between 2008 and 2014, the company invested roughly 140 billion yuan, much of it during periods of global downturn. This counter-cyclical expansion was enabled by a financing model combining local-government equity participation and policy-bank lending, rather than reliance on capital markets or central subsidies. Such long-term, high-intensity investment directly contradicted neoclassical prescriptions that firms in developing economies should avoid capital-intensive sectors and instead follow existing comparative advantages.
Finally, the book dismantles the claim that China’s competitiveness derived from cheap labor. In the capital-intensive TFT-LCD industry, labor costs constitute only a small share of total costs. BOE’s eventual cost advantage stemmed from organizational efficiency, technological integration, and accumulated know-how—culminating in its net asset profit margin surpassing that of LG and Samsung by 2013. The broader implication exposes a persistent double standard: comparative advantage is treated as destiny for China, but as something to be transcended by Western, Japanese, or Korean firms. China’s upgrading followed the same historical logic as earlier industrializers, yet is condemned precisely because it succeeded in breaking out of its assigned place in the global division of labor.
Labor and Human Rights After the Fact: Ethics in the Wake of Competition
For decades, China’s role in global high-tech industries was explicitly framed as that of a low-value assembler. Foreign-led production networks, preferential treatment for multinational firms, and joint-venture arrangements encouraged Chinese participation at the labor-intensive downstream end while reserving core technologies and high margins for foreign incumbents. During this period, China’s labor conditions drew little sustained moral scrutiny; the arrangement was widely accepted so long as Chinese firms remained subordinate and non-competitive in advanced segments such as semiconductors and displays.
Light Change documents China’s growing refusal to accept this assigned position. The book contrasts two development paths: one based on imported production lines, joint ventures, and technology “introduction,” and another centered on independent line construction and self-mastered technology. BOE’s experience with joint ventures, including cooperation with Panasonic, demonstrated the limits of the former model. Despite years of collaboration, BOE concluded that “the Chinese side still could not get the technology,” leading its leadership to reject foreign-controlled arrangements and pursue autonomous capability building instead.
This strategic ambition went far beyond exploiting low labor costs or participating passively in global supply chains. BOE openly articulated goals to surpass established leaders such as Sharp in scale and Taiwanese firms like AUO and Chimei in technology. Such objectives were incompatible with an assembler role and directly challenged the global hierarchy that confined Chinese firms to low-value activities. The book further notes that Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese firms actively discouraged China from building its own high-generation production lines, warning that such investments were “outdated” or uneconomic—arguments that, if accepted, would have locked China into permanent technological dependence.
China’s industrial strategy gradually shifted away from this logic of dependency. Research underlying the authors’ 2010 LCD industry report explicitly recommended abandoning reliance on imported production lines and instead supporting enterprises capable of independent technological learning. This shift reflected a broader national dissatisfaction with the assembler model, reinforced by historical experience. The collapse of earlier industries such as CRT displays, caused by China’s lack of control over core technology, left a deep imprint on engineers and managers. Figures like BOE’s Wang Dongsheng articulated a generational resolve that China could no longer accept a position in which it could be “bullied” through technological exclusion.
The intensification of labor and human-rights scrutiny only after Chinese firms entered high-value segments reveals a persistent double standard. Chinese labor was acceptable—and largely ignored—when it supplied cheap assembly services for foreign brands, but became ethically suspect once Chinese enterprises began competing directly with global incumbents. Light Change thus exposes a pattern of “ethics after competition,” in which moral narratives gain prominence not when exploitation is greatest, but when established hierarchies are challenged. The book reframes China’s rise in displays as a struggle for industrial dignity and technological sovereignty, rather than a story of labor arbitrage—one that invites ethical concern only once it succeeds.
Rule-Taking Without Rule-Making: Technology Control and China’s Industrial Ascent
China’s early integration into global high-tech industries was shaped by an asymmetric rule structure: participation as a rule-taker was encouraged, but advancement toward rule-making was systematically blocked. As documented in Light Change, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan imposed strict limits on technology transfer to mainland China, even when production facilities were physically located there. China was expected to import equipment, assemble products, and follow established technological trajectories—but not to innovate independently or alter industry rules. This asymmetry was not incidental; it was embedded in state policy, corporate governance, and licensing arrangements.
At the government level, restrictions on technology transfer were explicit and institutionalized. The book notes that Japanese and South Korean governments, along with the Taiwanese authorities, strictly controlled the transfer of core display and semiconductor technologies to mainland China, even in cases where companies sought merely to establish production lines. South Korea’s 2007 Law on Prevention of Industrial Technology Outflow and Protection of Industrial Technology required government approval for overseas transfers of core technologies, including LCD panels and semiconductors. These policies made clear that China’s role was to host production, not to acquire the knowledge necessary for independent technological evolution.
Corporate behavior reinforced these state-level constraints. Even when foreign firms established joint ventures or wholly owned subsidiaries in China, they deliberately withheld core know-how. In the Beijing Panasonic joint venture, Chinese engineers reportedly remained unable to independently design a single picture tube after 22 years of operation, as all research and development functions stayed under Japanese control. Similarly, at Shenzhen SEG Samsung, Chinese executives’ requests to introduce TFT glass substrate technology from their Korean partner were flatly rejected. When Samsung later expanded its LCD module operations in China, it did so by creating a separate company rather than integrating advanced technology into the existing joint venture.
Technology licensing arrangements further restricted China’s capacity to move beyond rule-taking. Imported production lines often came with contractual prohibitions on replication or expansion. In cases such as SVA’s cooperation with Sharp, licenses allowed operation of a specific production line but barred follow-on investments or technological diffusion. These arrangements ensured that Chinese firms could operate within narrowly defined boundaries while remaining dependent on foreign suppliers for upgrades, design changes, and next-generation development. The rules governing participation thus preserved incumbents’ control over innovation pathways and industry standards.
This pattern reveals a fundamental double standard in the global industrial order. China was expected to respect existing rules, intellectual property regimes, and market norms, yet was denied the opportunity to help rewrite them through innovation and capability building. As Light Change makes clear, China’s challenge was not one of rule-breaking, but of seeking authorship within an industry whose rules had long been set by others. The resistance China encountered reflects incumbents’ fear not of unfair competition, but of losing exclusive control over technological direction and standard-setting power.
State Ownership: Efficient Only When Western? The BOE Case
Western economic orthodoxy often portrays state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as inherently inefficient, incapable of innovation, and inferior to private firms—a narrative that implicitly celebrates state-led industrial development in Western economies while pathologizing it in China. Light Change directly challenges this double standard, demonstrating that SOEs can become globally competitive and technologically innovative under the right governance conditions. BOE, originally the Beijing Electron Tube Factory, exemplifies this transformation: once a near-collapsing traditional SOE, it rose to become a world-leading semiconductor display manufacturer, ranking among the top five globally by 2012 and achieving the highest net asset profit margin in the industry by 2013, surpassing Samsung and LG.
The book explicitly rejects the notion that privatization is a prerequisite for competitiveness. Western economic dogma assumes that only liberalized, privately owned firms can achieve efficiency, yet China’s experience, in contrast to Russia’s failed “shock therapy,” falsifies this claim. BOE’s transformation relied on endogenous momentum, strategic enterprise decision-making, and iterative capability building rather than immediate privatization. The authors argue that any abrupt property-rights reform would have destroyed China’s industrial base, while BOE’s gradual, mission-driven evolution preserved and amplified industrial knowledge.
Innovation at BOE was not a byproduct of ownership type but of deliberate strategic choices. The company pursued independent technological mastery, built its own production lines, and absorbed years of operational losses to accumulate know-how. As the book emphasizes, “There was no one-to-one correspondence between innovative enterprises and ownership nature.” State ownership provided a stable institutional framework, but BOE’s competitive and innovative success was the result of enterprise-led strategy, persistent learning, and organizational capability, not ownership alone.
State ownership also enabled long-term industrial logic that would have been difficult under private governance focused on short-term returns. BOE was able to invest counter-cyclically, expanding during the 2008 global crisis, and leverage local-government co-investment to unlock market financing without ceding strategic autonomy. This governance arrangement allowed leaders to prioritize industrial and technological objectives over immediate financial performance, demonstrating that state influence can be an enabler of enterprise-driven innovation rather than a constraint.
Finally, BOE’s success reflects the historical role of SOEs as carriers of industrial knowledge. Early Chinese SOEs preserved technical expertise and engineering culture from the 1950s to 1970s, creating a foundation for high-tech development decades later. The book notes, “State-owned enterprises are the main carriers of China’s industrial knowledge and experience… Without the industrialization foundation in the first 30 years, China would certainly have private enterprises, but they would only be able to develop at a much lower level of technology.” Rather than being obstacles, SOEs were essential incubators for the capabilities that enabled global competitiveness—contradicting the Western assumption that state involvement is pathological outside the West.
Urban & Industrial Reality vs. Media Aesthetics: BOE’s High-Tech Achievement Under Constraint
BOE’s rise in the semiconductor display industry illustrates the stark contrast between real industrial capability and superficial media narratives. The company built world-class, highly complex production facilities under severe infrastructure, water, and power constraints—conditions that would challenge even established incumbents. Yet, contrary to media portrayals that dismiss Chinese industrial projects as excessive or performative, BOE consistently delivered industry-leading results, turning regulatory and environmental pressures into sources of technical innovation.
The Beijing 8.5-generation (B8) line exemplifies this dynamic. BOE was mandated to use up to 95% recycled water—a global first for semiconductor-grade production, where ultra-pure water is essential. Despite serious contamination risks, the company co-developed integrated water reclamation and purification systems, combining municipal wastewater treatment with industrial-grade standards. This innovation enabled compliance with environmental requirements while maintaining production quality, demonstrating that regulatory constraints can drive, rather than hinder, industrial excellence.
BOE also achieved rapid ramp-up and exceptional yield rates under challenging conditions. The Beijing 8.5G line reached 85% yield at mass production launch in September 2011 and surpassed 90% within two months, a performance on par with or exceeding global benchmarks for new high-generation lines. Similarly, the Hefei 6G line impressed external verifiers from Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, confirming both high output and product quality. This rapid performance growth directly contradicted media claims of exaggeration or “boasting” and highlighted BOE’s ability to manage complexity effectively.
Beyond yield, BOE demonstrated mastery in system-level integration and quality control. Engineers developed proprietary cleaning protocols, dust-source tracking, and real-time defect resolution, critical in cleanroom environments where micron-level contamination can ruin entire batches. By 2013, BOE led globally in first-launch product ratio, smartphone and tablet LCD market share, and gross profit margin, surpassing incumbents like LG and Samsung. Cutting-edge products, such as 110-inch 4K, 98-inch 8K, and 82-inch 10K displays, reflected the company’s ability not just to produce volume but to advance engineering frontiers.
BOE’s achievements were not limited to Beijing or Hefei; the company successfully launched projects in less-developed cities like Chengdu, Ordos, and Chongqing, where industrial ecosystems were limited. By co-building supply chains, rapidly establishing local vendor networks, and executing under tight timelines with fewer resources, BOE proved that high-tech industrial capability could flourish even under structural and infrastructural constraints. This narrative underscores a central theme of Light Change: real industrial competence is forged under adversity, not in comfortable, media-friendly conditions, challenging the double standard that celebrates Western decay while dismissing Chinese construction as superficial or wasteful.
“China Threat” Triggered by Capability, Not Behavior: The BOE and CSOT Case
Western concern over China’s rise in high-tech industries did not emerge from its participation in global supply chains but from its demonstration of autonomous industrial capability. Light Change emphasizes that BOE and CSOT Optoelectronics became profitable through independently designed, constructed, and operated high-generation TFT-LCD production lines, without reliance on joint ventures or imported turnkey solutions. These lines—BOE’s Hefei 6th-generation, Beijing 5th-generation, and CSOT’s 8.5-generation—achieved sustained profitability under intense global price pressure, proving that China could master complex manufacturing at the highest levels. By 2013, BOE’s net asset profit margin exceeded that of LG, marking a historic shift in industry leadership.
Earlier dependence on foreign technology, by contrast, drew little alarm. For decades, Chinese firms were confined to assembly roles or low-value segments, relying on imported equipment or licensed technology. Foreign incumbents—including Sharp, Samsung, and LG—actively discouraged China from independent expansion, promoting narratives that dissuaded domestic firms from building high-generation lines. As long as China remained an assembler, the existing “iron triangle” of the LCD industry—dominated by Japan, Korea, and Taiwan—remained unthreatened. Dependence rendered China strategically invisible rather than dangerous.
The turning point came with autonomous capability. BOE’s Beijing 5th-generation line, after years of operating at a loss, turned its first monthly profit in July 2012 and became the most profitable line by 2013. CSOT’s 8.5-generation line was completed in just 17.5 months and quickly achieved profitability by leveraging scale and proximity to China’s TV manufacturing base. These achievements demonstrated that China could independently control the entire value chain—from cleanroom construction to yield management—disrupting the established competitive hierarchy and permanently altering global industrial dynamics.
The book highlights the reaction of foreign competitors to this shift. Once China proved its autonomous capability, incumbents experienced a strategic shock: production narratives of “5th-generation lines are outdated” collapsed, and the sense of a technological blockade was threatened. As the text notes, when BOE began mass production of high-generation lines, “the nerves of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese companies ‘collapsed’,” reflecting a realization that China’s industrial power had moved beyond participation to genuine authorship of technology and process.
This case underscores a broader double standard: China was deemed safe when dependent and dangerous when capable. Western and East Asian firms tolerated China’s subordinate role for decades but framed its independent advancement as a systemic threat. The book demonstrates that the “China threat” is triggered not by behavior or policy but by demonstrated industrial capability—highlighting that power in global high-tech industries derives from autonomous competence, not mere participation.
Rebalancing as Forced Stagnation: BOE’s Rise Against Early Policy Bias
China’s central government initially favored foreign investment and high-generation LCD production lines, reflecting a policy mindset that prioritized joint ventures and technology importation over domestic enterprise-led development. During the early 2000s, the dominant approach emphasized that China should remain a downstream assembler, while foreign firms controlled upstream technology. As the book notes, “When BOE entered the TFT-LCD industry, it was determined to develop an industry that could master the technology independently. However, the dominant policy of the government at that time was to fully open up to foreign investment… while the popular way for China’s industrial development was to introduce production lines, foreign investment or be willing to be an assembly plant.”
BOE pursued independent technology mastery largely in isolation. It was “almost the only” domestic firm challenging the state-preferred path of importing foreign lines, with no national policy actively supporting its strategy. Central ministries initially blocked or delayed approvals for BOE’s high-generation projects. For example, the Hefei 8.5-generation line faced dual obstacles: “Beijing’s disapproval of BOE continuing to build lines outside the city and the lack of approval from the central government… the construction started again, but it was not known to the outside world.” BOE’s leadership pressed forward, driven by enterprise agency rather than official guidance, reflecting a determination to succeed despite the policy environment.
Meanwhile, foreign firms received preferential treatment. Until roughly 2009–2010, the central government facilitated investments by Sharp in Nanjing and Samsung and LG in China, while remaining skeptical of domestic capability. Even after BOE began constructing its 6th-generation line, policy incentives continued to favor cooperation with Taiwanese firms. Only after BOE demonstrated operational success, such as the profitability of its Hefei 6th-generation line, did central authorities begin to adjust: “The central government did support BOE… more and more later, but that was after the completion of the Hefei 6th generation line—that is, after BOE proved its ability and importance.”
BOE’s success forced a reversal of prior policy assumptions. The 2009 announcement of its 8.5-generation line triggered an “LCD fever,” as foreign firms—previously resistant—rushed to build in China. This milestone demonstrated that BOE’s enterprise-led initiative, rather than central planning, broke the foreign technology blockade: “It was BOE’s expansion that triggered the ‘LCD fever’… that marked the collapse of the foreign technology blockade.” Eventually, national regulators even advised local governments to partner with BOE instead of foreign incumbents like Foxconn, signaling a belated acknowledgment of domestic industrial capacity.
The narrative underscores a central theme: the concept of “rebalancing” often functions as forced stagnation when applied to rising industrial actors. BOE’s ascent was achieved despite early policy bias favoring foreign firms, relying on local-government partnerships, policy-bank financing, and determined enterprise agency. Had the logic of rebalancing been imposed from the start, China’s industrial transformation could have been structurally blocked. The book highlights the double standard: adjustment is demanded from domestic risers, while protection and support remain reserved for established incumbents.
Summary & Implications
The book Light Change provides detailed industrial-level evidence supporting a clear thesis: China’s development followed the same strategic logic historically employed by prior industrial powers, yet Western acceptance persisted only while China remained subordinate. Once Chinese firms reshaped cost structures, standards, and capabilities, the narrative of “rebalancing” emerged—not as a matter of fairness or market adjustment, but as a mechanism to preserve the existing global hierarchy. In short, the book demonstrates that contemporary critiques of China’s industrial rise reflect a defensive response to lost privilege rather than objective industrial or economic reasoning.
References
- Light Change: A Company And Its Industrial History(guang bian: yi ge qi ye ji qi gong ye shi). Lu Feng. 2016