Zhang entered one of China's top universities before he was 13 years old. Let's see: when I was 13, I was still waiting to go through puberty. Zhang replaced Lee Kai-fu, (I have written quite a few blogs about Lee) as director of Microsoft's research center in Beijing in 2000. One thing that Zhang could do that no one else could before him was convince the Chinese government to award post-doctoral degrees to a foreign company for the first time. Zhang seems to be especially skilled at dealing with Chinese officials and his ability to cut through red tape to...