China's tech giants want to go global. Just one thing might stand in their way.

In the early 1980s, a cluster of fledging computer companies opened up shop in a chaotic corner of northwest Beijing, near the campuses of Peking and Tsinghua Universities. Electronics Street, as the area became known, was a tangle of sturdy bicycles and hand-drawn signs, loud with heated bouts of haggling. Dusty banners hung over pedestrians' heads, while boxes of copy paper stacked 10 or 12 high blocked their path. Pirated software was so abundant that some preferred the moniker Crook Street. The existence of a burgeoning PC market was remarkable, given that many Chinese still did not own a refrigerator. But more remarkable was that the businesses of Electronics Street were private enterprises. Their foray into capitalism was an experiment launched with China's economic reforms, which early on were linked to investments in science and technology.