About three, according to a report in last week's Financial Times. The story gets better. One of the prime recipients of this largesse was Legend Computer. Although SEC Director Zhong Xichang admitted that his group could not compete with Microsoft, the SEC's rollout announcement listed partnerships with 20 domestic electronics companies. There was no comment indicating how many of these were government-owned or controlled.
China now walks a tightrope on the world trade stage.
Premier Zhu Rongji clearly expected to return from the United States with World Trade Organization membership fully in hand, a quick deal achieved through a couple of weeks of concessions after 13 years of relative intransigence. Whether China fulfills its own dreams, as well as those of its trading partners, will become clearer within the next 12 months. If China continues to strip foreign partners of technology and then redirect sales to domestic companies, it risks losing everything. For some time I have been writing about what would happen to Internet companies without protective barriers. Profits eluded both, of course.