Traditionally, Japan has been the home of high end technological manufacturing. But over recent years China has been expanding its manufacturing capacity so that it is comfortably the second most productive nation in the world, behind the USA – and an increasing number of China’s factories are producing high specification technological goods.

Although the current recession is leaving large swathes of China’s manufacturing capacity empty, many of the world’s most famous brands still have a large quantity of their most popular goods coming out of China. As is well documented, Chinese based factories have significantly lower overheads than many other nations.

In terms of higher end manufacturing capacity, the Chinese government got one of the crown jewels of global industry, when they took receipt of Hong Kong in 1997. Though the British clearly would have liked to keep this highly lucrative island, there was the small question of a 99 year lease which had to be honoured.