A lot of Chinese companies are set up where each department is a strategic business unit (SBU). Look up how Haier is structured. This makes the company as a whole more competitive and allows separate departments to react to the market faster.
2. If a business unit becomes successful and is spun off, the ownership of the new entity is not obscured. Haier will own a piece of the new company, as will the employees, and outside investors can be brought in to provide capital.
3. Money doesn't move between economic shells. Transactions between entities have clear economic substance because they're not designed to layer and place illicit funds.
4. If you go to an office, there will be real people working. There aren't collections of ghost offices that come and go overnight.
Bottom line: legitimate enterprises don't have structures that obscure ownership and exist only to facilitate transactions that make it hard to trace where money is coming from and going to. They have structures that serve a clear economic purpose.