China's P-Chip Puzzle

A few days before the Sept. 2000 grand opening of a replica of Amsterdam's railway station at his Holland Village property development in the Chinese rust-belt city of Shenyang, agri-business tycoon Yang Bin decided he wanted the large greenhouses nearby filled with flora so visitors would get the impression the project was on track. Yang's farm experts protested there was no way to grow the requested tulip and orchid plants that quickly. Undeterred, Yang went out and bought them from local farmers, replanted them in the greenhouses and passed them off as his own. "If you work for a guy like...