Please; you tease us with a provocative statement like this, and then offer no examples to support it. I lived and worked in China for two years, heading up R&D for a major Telecom vendor. I continue to be involved with some activities in China as my wife is Chinese and I outsourced manufacturing and development to some Chinese companies in my last position.

What you have suggested has not been my experience. Merit counts; especially if it relates to technologies that are ‘below the radar’, or when the company wishes to ‘acquire’ the technology (a cynical form of insourcing), but ‘interesting’ areas that attract attention, demand Guanxi and supporting government policy. Sounds like MicroSoft is benefiting from both.

By the way, I would also be very interested in hearing of a relationship involving Huawei, that has survived the test of time, and which the western company would honestly claim was successful.

Merit? Is that code for money?
If the decision is taken by 1 person or 1 group of people and they are a ‘close’ group, its more important how much palm grease you use than how good your product is.

As an example, look at Kai-Fu Lee’s pay package (Google employee hired from Microsoft).

Microsoft paid him $4 million or so, Google $10 million, US companies are not permitted to bribe, so they hire intermiediaries. That’s why I think Lees package is so high, I suspect he’s a middleman to Chinese officials and half of that money is bribe money.