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The Sino–Soviet alliance paved the way for the implementation of a vast and systematic programme of industrial and military construction, as well as one of technology transfer. One of the earliest projects regarded a car-production complex in Changchun, situated in Northeast China’s Jilin province. While this factory was built following the highly verticalized model that the Soviets had derived from Fordism, car component clusters proliferated in other areas of China, cooperating with the big industrial complex and eventually surviving as an alternative model until Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. Scholars have so far identified the inventive indigenous use of technology during the Great Leap Forward (1958–60) as the main reason for the success of China’s dualistic industrialization process. The present article contends that the case of the car industry should be predated and better contextualized. Multi-archival research shows that from 1950 Chinese leaders had already seen the need to keep a foot in the global developments of technology and placed a bet on the pre-1949 Western European, Japanese and Republican legacy. These findings also add to the narrative of the Soviet-led industrialization process by integrating into the picture a strong transnational dimension and by recasting the debate on the Sino–Soviet alliance by placing high-quality technology, materials and human resources centre stage.

Counterbalancing low expectations with high hopes: Integrating global technology and pre-1949 legacy in China’s motor vehicle industry in the 1950s