Slums for the masses, fortunes for the few

Hu Bin is your archetypal Chinese real-estate entrepre­neur. Built like a bull, with a huge, moon-shaped head, a permanent grin and tiny, nicotine-blackened teeth, he is also the embodiment of Beijing’s sudden determination to use its huge capital reserves to buy the world.

Despite an estimated £5 billion fortune, Hu Bin would normally have remained a low-key figure, even in China. His company, Shanghai Zhongzhou International Holding, is the unlisted owner of isolated packets of high-end residential property dotted around Shanghai. But on 17 October he did something guaranteed to attract the attention of the world’s press, splashing out £15 million on a 40,000 square metre artificial island off Dubai and promising to spend £100 million turning it into a miniature Shanghai.

Hu’s confidence is one more sign of the power of emerging China. By planting a Chinese flag in the Dubai sand, he’s announcing the next leap forward in the development of China’s property sector.