And maybe today there are some Chinese rocket scientists telling their friends that their rover will be faster and lighter.

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College students and recent graduates without work are buying huge orders and selling them to their friends and on Taobao (a Chinese online consumer marketplace similar to eBay).

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It also wins the Chinese new friends--and their votes it needs in international forums like the United Nations and World Trade Organization as it takes an ever larger role on the world stage.

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For the Morningside Center in Beijing, Yau got help from the Chinese government and Ronnie and his brother, Gerald. (Gerald and Yau had been friends since their future wives were roommates in San Francisco in the late 1960s.) The government donated a plot, and the brothers put up the money for a building the center shares with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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