foreign invested enterprises (FIEs), but not to locals. This was not unique to Blessed County. As Huang relates in Selling China, the national government advanced a political hierarchy of companies that stretched from large state-owned firms at the top, followed by FIEs, and then to private domestic enterprises.34 Nationwide, for example, FIEs enjoyed a lower corporate tax bracket of as low as 15 percent, while Chinese companies were taxed at the full 33 percent. Such discriminatory treatment was partly politically driven.
