UTStarcom is a California-based telecommunications services provider whose beginnings lay with its founder, Lu Hong Liang. The Taiwanese Lu, who was educated in the U.S., saw his first opportunity for business in China. On a trip to China in 1990, Lu saw a country that was in the midst of a great change, the result of explosive population growth. The potential for this market was largely related to the country's size, which would require some sort of infrastructure to maintain business systems of increasing complexity.