The following dissertation examines the implementation of policies of the central State government of the People's Republic of China for the development of modern industrial technologies. Included are policies governing the initial acquisition of modern capital. goods and the technical knowledge to construct, install and operate them, as well as policies which aim at longer-term development of the capacity to re-design, adapt, and improve existing technologies and, ultimately, to invent and develop new capital goods and new technologies. Part 1 traces the evolution of technology policy objectives from 1952 to 1970, in relation to changes in the economic and political context. The structure of particular institutions established to implement technology policy is then related to the specific objectives for technological development laid down in the First FiveYear Plan (1953-1957). Subsequent modifications to these institutions are regarded as efforts to improve their effectiveness as instruments for these objectives. Part 2 considers the implementation of new technological objectives after 1960': the attempt to administer new policies through the institutions which had been established in connection with the First Five-Year Plan. These were in conflict with institutions which had been set up in the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960) to implement new technological objectives. In the initial conception, it is argued, 2 these objectives, and therefore the institutional "instruments" of these policies, were to be subordinate to the original long-term development strategy. ~~en the latter was postponed after 1960, short- and medium-term policy focused on technological goals similar to those of the 1956-1957 period. However, these were now to be administered through the original institutions, while efforts were made to dismantle some of the structures dating from the Great Leap. The conclusion of this stuQy is that the attempt to implement new policies through the old institutions was failing in the early 1960's. Indeed, in continuing to function largely as they had been intended to und.er the First Five-Year Plan, these institutions were building momentum toward a ~ facto restoration of the policies of the 1950's. Certain events during the Cultural Revolution (from 1966), therefore, are interpreted as efforts to adapt these institutions to the technology poliqy Which nominally had been in force since 1960, and in the process, to resolve the conflict between the two institutional "systems". At the same time, elements of the original institutional framework were retained as instruments of long-term technological development poliqy, which was to be resumed when economic and political circumstances permitted. Thus a greater continuity is indicated in Chinese policies for industrial and technological development, than has generally been assumed. Further, while not excluding social and political reasons for the institutional changes brought by the Cultural Revolution, this analysis looks at these primarily as obstructions to the implementation of certain short-term aspects of technology policy. This approach makes it possible to discern a greater degree of consistency in the policies for technology import, science, and education during and since the Cultural Revolution.