Beijing

ZHANG Long made his fortune selling Pu'er fermented tea and handcrafted furniture from the mountains of his native Yunnan province.

Last November, the 49-year old entrepreneur, who has no technology background, strode into a Beijing ballroom to pitch his latest made-in-China product: SPGnux, a Linux-based operating system he says could replace Microsoft Corp's Windows. "Information security is vital to the interests of China and the interests of the Chinese people," Mr Zhang proclaimed as a marketing video flashed images of former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.