He was put up in the condo owned by Changhong, ready for his close-up.
He was put up in the condo owned by Changhong, ready for his closeup.
Changhong and the three other Apex vendors had to retool factories to make a common DVD player.
Orders exploded, and Ji expanded to four vendors, including Changhong, and began selling to Wal-Mart and Best Buy.
The Chinese search engine just launched the Changhong H5018, a customized smartphone also based on the Android system.
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The leading household appliance brands, by contrast, are cheaply priced domestic makers such as TCL, Changhong and Little Swan.
Changhong sued in a U.S. court last year, hoping to enforce the agreements that Apex said were signed under duress.
By July of last year Ni, David Ji's ally, was forced out amid scrutiny from Changhong's bankers and the local press.
Still, Changhong continued expanding its exposure to its late-paying customer, doubling TVset shipments to Apex to 3 million units, Hsu says.
Yet Apex, undaunted, vastly expanded its business with Changhong, selling 1.5 million cheap Changhong TV sets in the U.S. market in 2002.
Changhong officials, meanwhile, have filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit in Los Angeles county court and are trying to take control of Ji's company.
Changhong, a former defense contractor that had made screens for military systems, had become the biggest domestic maker of TV sets for local markets.
That April the U.S. Department of Commerce cited Changhong for dumping artificially underpriced TVsets on the U.S. market, slapping it with a 24.5% tariff.
On Dec. 13 Changhong representatives descended on Apex offices near Los Angeles, citing the documents with Ji's forced signature and demanding access to Apex files.
Confident he could appease Changhong's new chairman, Ji called Zhao from his hotel room on Oct. 22 and set plans to meet him on the 24th.
To bolster Changhong's case, attorneys for Zhao(the new chief) wanted a second videotape made, this one in English to show Ji confirming the sign-over of assets in the first tape, Hsu says.
As his dispute with Changhong worsened last year, Ji ignored an adviser's warning and blithely flew to Shanghai in October 2004, confident his China contacts and his own stature would protect him.
Ji's attorneys said Changhong was wildly overstating the debt and insisted that Ji issued the checks after a Changhong executive said he merely wanted to hold them for security and wouldn't cash them.
In fact, Chinese companies like Changhong Electric are fast becoming leaders in the Smart TV field, recently announcing a partnership with San Francisco startup Flingo (a developer of Social TV apps) to better enable second screen engagement for Asian consumers.
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