In mid-2004, executives at the Tokyo headquarters of the huge electron- ics multinational NEC began to hear reports that its products were being counterfeited and sold in Chinese stores. Nobody was at all surprised. Reports of this kind were routine for any corporation of NEC’s size and reach, and in this case they initially seemed to concern small stuΩ—blank DVDs and the like. The company nevertheless moved swiftly to put into action its standard response in such cases, hiring a firm called Inter- national Risk to look into the matter. There was no reason to suspect that this would prove to.
