Chinese business has come a long distance. Throughout the first seven decades of the 20th century China was largely inward looking and disrupted by political fragmentation, famine and foreign invasion. Although Mao Zedong reunified China, it was Deng Xiaoping’s rise in 1978 that made the economy a central priority, perceived as a useful vehicle to pull millions of Chinese out of poverty and restore China as a serious international power. Two short decades after Deng, Chinese business, both state-owned and privately held, began to stride in significant numbers on to the international stage.
