Whatever the cause, a flood swept the city and Smart Union was badly hit.

ECONOMIST: Business in China

Smart Union quickly evolved from making cheap, injection-moulded figurines to toys with mechanical and then electronic parts.

ECONOMIST: Business in China

None of these factors would have been fatal, but for an abrupt tightening of credit in early 2008 that, in effect, cut Smart Union's working capital in half.

ECONOMIST: Business in China

Within the clubby world of toy manufacturers, which stretches from the office blocks of east Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong to the factories over the border, Smart Union was seen as one of the winners, a trusted manufacturer with none of the quality problems that came to terrify the buyers of Chinese products.

ECONOMIST: Business in China

"We are facing an extinction crisis, " said Jane Smart, director of the biodiversity conservation group with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

BBC: World's biodiversity 'crisis' needs action, says UN

You would think we'd be too smart to leave all that talent for India, China or the European Union to gobble up.

FORBES: The Immigrants We Desperately Need