Every container leaving a Chinese port needed inspection and quarantine paperwork, and companies carried stacks of it to a government office. Ninetowns, based in Beijing, built software that let them file those forms online with the agency in charge. China was becoming the workshop of the world, and the filings kept multiplying. Ninetowns offered its American depositary shares in December 2004, when investors were eager for a piece of China's internet and software market.

In the Path of Filings

Ninetowns bet that as China's trade boomed, the state would move customs and inspection work onto computers. It built the software that companies used to talk to the inspection system. That put Ninetowns in the path of a large and growing flow of filings. Its customers were thousands of exporters who needed the tools to keep their goods moving through the ports.

A Buyout at $1.80

Ninetowns priced its ADSs at $11 in December 2004 and listed on Nasdaq under the ticker NINE. Its core business slowed, and the company tried new ventures. The stock fell far below its offering price. In 2012 a group of directors and officers led by chief executive Wang Shuang proposed to buy out the public shareholders. The deal closed in 2014 at $1.80 per share.

Cover: Pulling Oars under Clearing Autumn Skies 晴秋涉櫂圖, Lu Zhi. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for boats pulling oars under autumn skies (a trading nation).