Other Zhengye customers include GD Midea, whose main owner he Xiangjian ranked at no. 185 on the 2011 Forbes Billionaires List.

More telling, perhaps, is the arrival of firms from Guangdong, such as Midea, an electronics firm, and Konka, a television-maker, which bought a refrigerator factory.

Attitudes across Europe are changing, he admits: in Germany, for example, some politicians opposed the purchase of Kuka, a robotics firm, by Midea, a big Chinese appliance manufacturer.