With the help of its tiny township government in Shunde county, its founders, Pan Ning and Wang Guoduan, turned it from the 42nd-largest fridge maker in 1984 into China's biggest in six years.
To gain permission to manufacture their new model-a right then held by a few dozen state-owned factories-Wang and Pan lugged their prototype 2, 000 km to Beijing to show the Minister for Light Industry.