The struggle of the champions
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3535818
Jan 6th 2005 | BEIJING, HONG KONG, LONGGANG, SHANGHAI, SHENZHEN AND
QINGDAO
From The Economist print edition
China wants to build world-class companies. Can it succeed?
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THE floor of the darkened room is strewn with mattresses and scattered
shoes. Sleeping bodies stir under duvets. Nearby, others nap at their
desks, heads on arms. It is a Friday afternoon at the headquarters of
Huawei-one of China's most dynamic and ambitious companies and one of
a handful, alongside Haier in white goods, Lenovo in personal
computers, TCL in televisions and steelmaker Baosteel, whose names are
starting to be heard around the world.
The scene is reminiscent of a place on the other side of the globe:
Silicon Valley at its most breathless, when programmers on the go
"24/7" collapsed with exhaustion at their workstations. Huawei's
astonishing campus on the outskirts of the southern city of Shenzhen is
straight out of the technology bubble too, with four football fields,
swimming pools, apartments for 3,000 families and a fantastical
Disney-esque research centre with doric pillars and marbled interior.
Is the wakening giant a monster?
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A Blueprint for the Future
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