AP Photo

In June of 2011, Xiang Li sat in a hotel room in Saipan, trying to close a deal with US businessmen. The 35-year-old entrepreneur from Chengdu, China had brought along some samples of his wares—a collection of software on DVDs ready for resale; sample packaging materials and associated designs; and 20 gigabytes of proprietary data from software developers. And every bit of it was stolen.