Rob Armstrong

I'll take that as a no.

But excitingly, with me in the studio here in London, I also have our man in Beijing, Joe Leahy.

Joe, thanks for coming in.

I spotted you in the newsroom in London and I thought, aha, I'm going to kidnap Joe Leahy and make him talk about China.

It's not about the widgets anymore.

It's about the solar panels and all of that good stuff.

What's the deal here?

Right.

How long have you been out there?

How much has it changed since COVID?

Yeah, I hear Beijing and Shanghai are like quiet.

It's just humming along on all those EVs.

And so, as you say, it's getting good at the high-end stuff.

Part of this series that you've just been involved in, this China Shock 2.0 series, is like the rest of the world is waking up to this.

What does it mean?

How much should this bother Rob Armstrong and his ilk out in the States?

Germany, for example, its economy, its manufacturing base has been based around a couple of things.

One of them is its car industry, which is sold cars all around like Europe and the UK and all over the place.

But also German industry is very much about selling high end stuff to China, like manufacturing equipment to China, heavy industrial stuff to China.

That whole equation seems to be getting a little bit out of joint now.