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ffort in China. These corporations often

complain at what they consider the illegal pirating of their tech-

nologies and designs by indigenous Chinese companies. But they

can do little about it given the reluctance of the Chinese govern-

ment to intervene and the power of the Chinese state to make

things di

fficult for them to operate in the world’s largest market if

they press too hard on such issues. And it is not only foreign

companies that have been active. Both Japan and South Korea have

invested in large-scale ‘research cities’ in China to position them-

selves to take advantage of highly skilled but low-cost labour. The

overall e

ffect is to make China a much more attractive location for

high-tech sector activities.

26

 Even Indian high-tech companies 

it cheaper to o

ffshore some of their activities to China. An

indigenous high-tech sector has also taken o

ff in a number of areas.

In Shenzhen, for example, ‘with dozens of sleek stone and glass

buildings that would not look out of place in Silicon Valley, the

expanding campus houses many of the 10,000 engineers working

to establish Huawei as China’s

first international player in the