The smartest companies have become adept at having it both ways. The largest, and founding, shareholder of Lenovo, the computer firm which bought IBM’s PC business, is a state science think-tank, but the company is registered and listed overseas and largely privately managed. For a while, it was headquartered in the US. Yang Yuanqing, the head of the company, still squirms when his Communist Party membership is raised. ‘Let’s not talk politics, OK?’ he replied when asked after the IBM deal in late 2004 how he reconciled party membership with his business commitments.
