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It sounds like they weren't hiring white guys because the Chinese have an 'inferiority complex', but because the Chinese economy is export driven and successful companies sell stuff to Americans and they wanted to imply to potential investors and officials that they were already working on deals with American companies.

In short, they were committing fraud, but because their lie involved fictitious American customers, they needed some white faces to pull it off.

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Wouldn't the investors be able to see through the smoke, though? I mean, if a phony starts getting peppered with technical questions, and he balks, shouldn't that be a giveaway?

If the "phony" peppered with tech questions was patio11, I'm sure he could handle the questions well enough. :)

In Chinese at a carpet convention? ;)

Never underestimate the power of A/B testing :P

It's hard enough to tell the phonies from the real thing, for a domain expert. Investors are usually not experts at their domain, and only have limited time to assert the person.

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