HONG KONG -- As China prepared to join the World Trade Organization in 2001, the mayor of a large northern city told me that he feared the city's heavy truck company -- an old socialist stalwart that had been praised by Chairman Mao -- would die once the capitalist winds of the WTO were unleashed.
But nearly two decades later the China National Heavy Truck Company -- now rebranded as Sinotruk -- is doing just fine. It ranks as one of China's biggest state-owned enterprises, exports trucks to more than 100 countries and has won hundreds of patents for innovation.
