How China stole the West (and we happily gave it away)

The Chinese Communist Party considers dominating the world as a work in progress but many believe it’s largely a done deal. Having visited the country working and lecturing over 27 times, Jonathan Margolis reflects on how they’ve outwitted our ‘drunk’ nation of work-shy, chaotic citizens, distracted by trivia and culture wars

Chinese people under President Xi Jinping are so business-minded that it’s almost impossible to believe they live in a state that is still officially communist (AFP/Getty)

Earlier this month, I was one of dozens of journalists invited to Germany for the launch of a robotic lawn mower by a Chinese company. It’s a nice lawnmower with some fine features, much better value than its rivals. But in many ways not worth going into, the launch was a bit of a shambles. 

The company employees over from Beijing were clearly having a fine old time but the venue was a depressing conference centre in the middle of nowhere.

The Chinese team clearly hadn’t given much thought to organisational details, which led to a lot of rather irritated European reporters being left out in the rain for hours with nothing to do.