It was hard to miss the elaborate and frighteningly well-choreographed show that China put on last week to mark the 60th anniversary of its founding as a communist state. Thousands of goose-stepping soldiers and convoys of ballistic missile launchers rolled down the Avenue of Eternal Peace toward Tiananmen Square, where president Hu Jintao boasted of “a socialist China geared toward modernisation”. He added: “The world and the future towers majestically in the East.”
Subtle it was not. Yet a few hours later and thousands of miles away, a far more understated affair spoke just as eloquently of Beijing’s ambitions. At the Charing Cross Hotel in central London, a handful of shareholders agreed to a takeover.
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