Huawei, the telecommunications equipment manufacturer and perhaps China’s most globally successful company, is careful to say it is a collective rather than a private company, a definitional distinction that has been essential to the company’s receipt of state support at crucial points in its development. In 1996, Zhu Rongji, then vice-premier, visited Huawei with the heads of four large state banks in tow. On hearing the company needed funds to compete with foreign firms in the domestic telco equipment market, Zhu ordered the banks on the spot to support the company. ‘Buyer’s credit [for
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