Robert Lee regretted his trip to California. Although the young Chinese developer was accustomed to the vagaries of doing business in China, he had found his brushes with American capitalism even more frustrating: his meetings had been constantly interrupted, postponed or cancelled, while his counterparts had shown an astonishing lack of knowledge about technology developments in non-American markets.

The experience had spurred his hasty return to Beijing, where the entrepreneur now found himself surveying the high-tech district from the towering windows of Zhongguan Securities. The crowds far below surged through the streets like nothing so much as electricity pulsing through a computer circuit. It was not such a bad place for a tech company to start out, he mused. And with that thought the conference doors opened and Robert turned to meet the team....