An often overlooked element was how poorly Nortel treated their Chinese employees. State directed espionage doesn't get hundreds of engineers to jump ship to do

An often overlooked element was how poorly Nortel treated their Chinese employees. State directed espionage doesn't get hundreds of engineers to jump ship to domestic PRC firms. Money does. Then the knowledge travels with them. Nortel Guangzhou had bamboo ceiling on Chinese management roles in the late 90s that extended to even Chinese Canadians. Big surprise when entire engineering teams got poached by ZTE and Huawei. A Chinese Canadian aquaintence who started in Nortel Ottawa poached most of his Nortel GZ engineering team because state companies simply compensated better and provided more opportunities. A few years later, he poached a bunch of engineers from state company back to a foreign one who promoted. PRC talent would rather stay working with foreign multinations due to prestige and better conditions especially in the late 90s, but at the end of the day, money talks.