By the end of the allotted time China and Europe are working brilliantly together, but the opening exchanges, everyone agrees, are a salutary illustration of the kind of "dialogue of the deaf" that often afflicts the Western interactions with China.

"I was quite uncomfortable with the way some of the Europeans were behaving," reflected Darren Steele, a 34-year-old IT engineer for the oil and gas industry who is married to a Chinese woman. "They certainly didn't seem to have any appreciation initially of how we were appearing to the Chinese side."

To a degree, the Chinese make allowances, but only to a degree. "We expect Europeans to express their opinions forcefully," says Ran Maoqi, executive vice-president of Maipu, a Chengdu-based Chinese technology company, "but we also know they shout them out just as loudly even when they are wrong.

"We Chinese don't like to lose face, so we wait and watch carefully before saying what we think. The annoying part is when the Europeans ignore or shout over us even when we are right."