Even with China's scale, you don't rebuild a 75,000-person tech company from scratch. Brand awareness is quite important in the consumer electronics sector, and it would take a lot of effort and investment to retake that #4 cellphone vendor position with a new brand.
They already have all the staff and the tech. They just need to rebrand, and since the new company won't be ZTE, they'll just start buying American components again.
Replace all ZTE ads with ads for the new company, and never explicitly say that this is the rebirth of ZTE, while still making it very obvious to the consumer.
This will all be a blip on the radar.
For those who remember the TechTV/G4 merger - remember when The Screen Savers was "cancelled" and then a "new show" called Attack of the Show started airing in the exact same timeslot, with the exact same people, on the exact same set - but the branding was different?
That's what the Chinese government is going to do to ZTE and all its assets.
Seems like a lot of work to maintain a presence in the North Korean and Iranian market. What if they do all of the rebranding and the US government says, "Sorry its the same company".