China has tough foreign ownership laws in areas such as finance,...

China has tough foreign ownership laws in areas such as finance, telecoms, internet services and education: that is all the areas in which SMA is trying to make a buck. One can't just land in China and set up a business in any of these areas without a considerable amount of homework and networking.

It has taken years of frustration and hard graft from the initial achievement of providing software to the Beijing Olympics to the present situation.

There is no guarantee that SMA is going to make it big from here on out but given the amount of groundwork already covered I would suggest that they have a better chance of success than many of its competitors.