How much of a that is poor or inexperienced management hiring too many or not reading the Mythical Man Month, and how much of that is cultural or political pressure to hire people even if their jobs are make-work? I would be surprised if Chinese managers were not aware of these inefficiencies, but justified them as part of a social contract.
They had very smart but quite junior engineering management.
There was a lot of political pressure from investors etc to match the effort of a local competitor - who had sort-of (naturally they missed all the good, non-obvious bits) cloned our product with a staggering staff of 600 people.
