I mean IBM are not among the best but we cannot condemn that their personnel, especially ethnic Chinese, are incompetent. It could just be that their potential have been stifled by poor management, as is most often the case when companies go downhill. It should not be easily assumed that they are of worse quality than for example Huawei engineers just because the end product is much worse. So China should welcome these new engineers and try to give them the leadership they deserve.Only the most ignorant would say that. IBM is a remarkable company that is still prospering after pivoting from office equipment to computers to services garnering the most corporate patents globally for the last three decades.
Imho a genuine zombie company would be one like Chrysler or GM, propped up on subsidies only.This is something that is not true and it was so kind of the Americans to teach us this, even if it was inadverdently. A Chinese company that chases profits at all costs outsourcing its critical tech components overseas to the best bid is useless to China's national power; it is worse than useless because it competes with wholesome Chinese companies in the Chinese market. What are wholesome companies? Those that invest in China, buy Chinese parts, find ways to make these parts perform on par with or better than the foreign parts they could have more easily and empty-mindedly purchased, and contribute overall to the advancement of Chinese technology from the ground up. A small wholesome company is worth infinitely more than any number of large zombie companies assembling foreign parts, picking the low-hanging fruit for nothing but money: artificially valued paper. When a small wholesome company gets a solid footing, then expands into a huge wholesome company, then we have a national champion.
Come to think of it, this is another factor in China's gdp growing slower than before: it is the transformation and fat-cutting of large zombie corporations that relied on doing massive amounts of business depending on foreign critical supply chains into lean and mean indigenous tech companies that can truly fight in the tech war. The first phase is turning 10 pounds of fat into 6 pounds of muscle. The second phase is replicating that muscle and spirit into fighting giants giving rise to a forest of national champions. Seeing American struggle and suffer defeat to just 1 Huawei, it's honestly overkill but... you know, once China gets started, there's no stopping it. As the Germans say, "Once the Chinese come after your craft, consider your days numbered."
Companies that do a large amount of low level outsourcing also have their job in China, as long as they are profitable. They train R&D employees, industrial planners and so on.
Generally the public that can afford a premium are gonna expect a homemade product, but not everyone can pay a premium. And in the meantime, companies specializing in extracting superprofits from the west and global south are training industry leaders and engineers that can one day create premium/breakthrough products, while their profits are used to expand China's hold on international resources and home industry.
At the same time, they also choke out China's competitors from their profits in their own home markets.
