Ｔｈｅ　Ｄｏｎｇｇｕａｎ　Ｅｐｉｔｏｍｅ　ｏｆ　Ｃｒｉｓｉｓ－Ｈｉｔ　Ｍａｎｕｆａｃｔｕｒｉｎｇ.docVIP

Ｔｈｅ　Ｄｏｎｇｇｕａｎ　Ｅｐｉｔｏｍｅ　ｏｆ　Ｃｒｉｓｉｓ－Ｈｉｔ　Ｍａｎｕｆａｃｔｕｒｉｎｇ 　　 　　THE Zhangmutou Township government of Dongguan City, Guangdong Province announced on October 16, 2008 in a notice pinned to the Hejun Toy Factory gate that the company had gone into liquidation. The notification was accompanied by a few wanted ads for workers at other local enterprises. 　　The Hong Kong-invested toy factory of more than 6,000 employees had been declared bankrupt a few days earlier. News of the factory’s closure sent ripples of foreboding through the many other enterprises in Dongguan, a city synonymous with manufacturing. 　　 　　The Hejun Harbinger 　　 　　Two months later on December 9, Lan Jiezhou, special assistant to the director of the Longchang Toy Factory a few kilometers away in Dongguan’s Changping Town, had few comments to make on the collapse. 　　The media had earlier described the Hejun event as the “first case of bankruptcy in China’s tangible economy as a result of the American financial crisis,” implying that it was harbinger of future bankruptcies due to plummeting orders and shrinking assets. 　　 “Even though the Hejun bankruptcy is in some ways attributable to the international financial crisis and rising costs, the actual culprit was ruptured fund chains as a consequence of erroneous investment decisions and general mismanagement,” Lan Jiezhou said. 　　The investment decision Lan referred to was Hejun’s RMB 269 million purchase in October 2007 of a 45.51-percent share in the Fujian Tiancheng Mining Industry, with a view to engage in silver mining. The plan was to obtain a mining license in April 2008 and open production in 2009. Hejun, however, failed to complete all the necessary formalities, and its mining license application was rejected. The company was unable to recover its investment, and hence the break in the fund chain. 　　Rumors of a bankruptcy tide sweeping across Dongguan had in fact been circulating since the beginning of 2008. But data for up to late 2008 collect