The Huajian Group, a Sino-Taiwan shoe maker, is precisely the type of Chinese exporter that should be on its knees. Headquartered in Dongguan, a manufacturing centre in southern Guangdong province, Huajian exports 95 per cent of its output to the US, focus of the global financial crisis.

“Christmas orders are coming in and probably won't be as high as last year,” says Zhang Huarong, Huajian's founding chairman. “But things are getting better these days. Our profit margin has decreased but orders are up 10 per cent from our worst period [earlier this year].” The company, he adds, has recently increased its workforce by more than 20 per cent – to 22,000 workers from 18,000 – and raised salaries 3 per cent.

It is a similar story across town at Dongguan's Songshan Lake high-tech park, a model business development zone. There, Celestica, a former IBM division, makes teleconferencing equipment and Xbox computer game consoles for Microsoft.