As the 2030 deadline for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals draws closer, progress is increasingly constrained by overlapping crises — from climate shocks to uneven recovery and widening inequality. Technological change, often celebrated as a great equalizer, has not resolved these divides. In many cases, it has deepened them.
Since the reform and opening-up, over 800 million Chinese have been lifted out of extreme poverty.
While the scale of this achievement is widely discussed, less attention has been paid to a quieter question embedded in that process: Can technology be shaped to serve those at the bottom of the income ladder and vulnerable groups, rather than simply those already positioned to benefit from it?
This question is becoming more urgent as artificial intelligence and digital systems accelerate the pace of innovation. Left to market forces alone, new technologies tend to follow familiar patterns. They emerge in wealthy urban centers, consolidate around high-income users, and only gradually diffuse outward — if at all. The result is not just inequality of income, but inequality of access to productivity itself.
In agriculture, communication, and energy systems alike, diffusion tends to follow a core — periphery structure. Smartphones, electric vehicles, and precision farming tools typically appear first in major cities and commercially advanced regions.
Rural and remote communities come later, often much later, if they are reached at all. Without intervention, technology does not naturally “trickle down” to close the gaps. It can just as easily reinforce them.
China”s experience in poverty reduction has, in part, been shaped by an attempt to intervene in this pattern.
A useful example comes from Nanping in Fujian province. After severe flooding in 1998, local authorities faced not only the challenge of reconstruction but also a deeper constraint: farmers lacked access to basic agricultural technologies, such as improved seed varieties and processing methods. In response, the government deployed 225 agricultural scientists to 215 villages in 1999 as “science and technology commissioners” — known in UNDP terminology as a technical task force.
Their role was direct engagement: teaching, demonstration, and applied technical support in the villages. The impact was tangible. Crop yields rose, incomes improved, and new practices spread locally. The significance of this experiment lay not in its scale alone, but in its underlying assumption — that technology diffusion requires institutional design, not passive expectation.
Yet even this model exposed a structural constraint. In western regions such as Ningxia Hui autonomous region, local governments found they simply did not have enough technical personnel to replicate the approach.
Agricultural knowledge was scarce, but so too were market information systems, financing channels, and managerial expertise.
The response in Ningxia was to broaden the definition of who could act as a technology commissioner.
Instead of limiting the role to state-employed scientists, authorities began to recognize individuals and organizations capable of bringing technology, capital, information, or management capacity into rural areas. Entrepreneurs, in particular, began to play this role, often sharing risk and returns directly with farmers through equity participation or profit-sharing arrangements.
Over time, this expanded system became institutionalized. In 2016, China’s State Council formalized the science and technology commissioner system.
Today, more and more commissioners operate across the country. Some work individually with villages, others in teams supporting entire townships, and others as institutional partners linked to counties and broader industrial chains.
What is notable is not only the scale, but the flexibility of the model. It reflects a recognition that technology diffusion is not a single pipeline, but a network of relationships — between knowledge, capital, and local capacity.
Still, technology transfer within regions is only part of the challenge.
After China announced the elimination of absolute poverty in 2020, attention shifted to preventing large-scale relapse and strengthening long-term development capacity, particularly in less-developed western areas.
This is where inter-regional cooperation becomes relevant.
Since the mid-1990s, China has operated a structured system of eastern-western cooperation, pairing more developed coastal provinces with inland regions. One of the most established examples is the Fujian-Ningxia partnership.
In recent years, this cooperation has taken on a more explicitly technological dimension.
In 2025, Fujian dispatched dozens of science and technology commissioners to Ningxia, focusing on agricultural upgrading — grape cultivation, mushroom production, fruit farming, and wine-making.
Over time, Ningxia has developed a globally recognized wine industry, a transformation closely linked to sustained technical exchange rather than isolated investment.
The broader implication is that development capacity itself can be transferred, not just capital or infrastructure.
At a more visible level, the impact of such policies can be seen in everyday life. In rural areas, solar-powered lighting now appears in homes, courtyards, and livestock shelters. Solar streetlights illuminate village roads automatically. In conversations with farmers, one recurring theme is not only improved income, but reduced vulnerability to energy price shocks. Access to renewable energy has, in a practical sense, expanded household autonomy.
External interest in such approaches is also growing.
Officials from countries such as Uzbekistan have expressed interest in adapting elements of China’s experience, particularly in agricultural greenhouse technologies for poorer rural communities.
None of this suggests a single replicable model. Institutional contexts differ too widely for simple transfers. But it does point to a broader question that extends beyond China: whether technological systems can be designed with distribution in mind from the outset, rather than corrected after inequality has already widened.
If technology is one of the defining forces of economic transformation in the 21st century, then the distribution of its benefits may matter as much as its pace.
The challenge is no longer only how fast innovation occurs, but whom does it reach — and on what terms.
In that sense, the question is not whether technology can be pro-disadvantaged.
It is whether societies are willing to design institutions that make it so.
The author is a tenure-track professor at the Institute for Six-Sector Economy, Fudan University.
The views don’t necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
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