From The BusinessWeekly Online:

CEO Edward Tian discusses the challenges of running the state-owned telco and the “50% business and 50% politics balance” it entails

As chief executive of China Netcom, the country’s second-largest fixed-line carrier, 42-year-old Edward Tian has learned the delicate art of keeping foreign investors happy while answering to the company’s ultimate majority shareholder, the Chinese government. U.S.-educated Tian — he has a Ph.D. in resource management from Texas Tech University — made a fortune in the private sector after the company he founded, AsiaInfo, went public on Nasdaq, before joining one of China’s most important state-linked companies in 1999.