[gregsq]

I'm sort of amused that an outfit from Shenzhen China, perhaps the worlds great manufacturing centre for options like this, is asking for US dollars to make 1000 boards, when firms like ARMJISHU can knock ARM boards out in no time and sell them cheap as chips.

There's nothing that special about this that I can see. And giving loaned Chinese money back for free when they have such a massive comparative advantage seems an exercise in market distortion to me.

[wisty]

Small innovative Chinese outfits lack capital. There's big, government affiliated outfits with lots of capital, and outsourcing companies (like Foxconn, which is Taiwan run), but not a lot of capital for bootstrapped companies.

OK, I've heard that's changing, but it's not Silicon Valley.