Has China obtained the world’s most important machine?
by The Economist · Australian Financial ReviewThe Economist
Jul 6, 2026 – 10.52am
The Dutch punch above their weight in technology transfers that shaped the modern world.
In the 17th century, their financial and farming innovations spread to Britain, laying the ground for the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire’s expansion. Peter the Great, a Russian tsar, studied Dutch shipbuilding techniques to build the navy that established Russia as a maritime power in the 18th century. And in the 1970s, a Pakistani scientist, AQ Khan, stole blueprints from a Dutch laboratory to launch his country’s nuclear weapons program and seed similar efforts in North Korea, Iran and Libya.
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