The previous week saw the mayor of Nanjing fly in with 100 people in tow, and the governor of Liaoning province with 800.

ECONOMIST: Banyan

Officials appear miffed that Shenyang, a nearby city in Liaoning province with huge state-enterprise troubles of its own, has stolen a march by putting dozens of its enterprises on the block for just one yuan each.

ECONOMIST: China

Its Liaoning Birla carbon in China, a partnership with Dashiqiao Ronghua Co, is in operation since 2003.

FORBES: Billionaire Kumar Birla expands his carbon black footprint

Jiang turned his studies at the Liaoning Chinese Medicine Research Institute into a joint venture with a foreign partner in 1986.

FORBES: China's 50 Richest Businessmen

Meanwhile the rise and rise of Zhou Furen, a party-man turned businessman who has been doing his bit to turn around the fortunes of depressed Liaoning province (see article), shows what you can do with the right party credentials.

ECONOMIST: Holding back China's private firms holds back China too

Of the north-east's GDP, two-thirds was being produced by state-owned firms, many of which were loss-making, says Cui Wantian of Liaoning University (he thinks they now contribute less than 50%, compared with about 30% nationally).

ECONOMIST: Reforming the north-east

The Liaoning specimen is especially significant because it means the fossil record now sits more comfortably with what genetic studies have been suggesting about the timing of the emergence of the different mammalian lineages.

BBC: Fossil redefines mammal history