According to the general manager, Wang Wei Ping: "No machine has yet been invented which could do this job precisely enough."Guangdong province (the province of Canton), is China's most prosperous region. Now, two years later, it has 170.At Newport, dozens of young women sit for eight hours a day, winding and threading components by hand. The investment is profitable, if not glamorous.A typical British presence is to be found on the fifth and sixth floors of a scruffy building in a special business zone, just outside Canton.Newport (Guangzhou) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a British electronics company, producing components used in telecommunications systems worldwide The firm began with 20 employees in 1994. Canton (or Guangzhou, to give it its Chinese name) is turning itself into a boom town - with British participation.When Michael Heseltine arrives in China today his mission will be to sell the UK to China, and China to the UK. The Deputy Prime Minister comes with 280 businessmen in tow, in the largest-ever British trade mission to the People's Republic British businesses are key investors in Canton. Outside a skyscraper still shrouded in bamboo scaffolding, a sign proclaimed: "Welcoming our honourable guests to attend the topping-out ceremony of the Bank of America plaza." New buildings are going up in every corner of the city. In the Qing Ling market, you can buy everything from dogs and cats (for eating, naturally) to Mao badges and ancient sets of mah-jong.

Much in the city, however, has changed beyond recognition in the past few years. Yesterday, band music and flags in the city centre seemed to indicate that a festival was taking place Which, in a sense, it was. On Shamian Island, by the Pearl River, the old colonial-era buildings and missionary buildings, Jardine & Matheson's godowns, and a clutch of former consulates are grouped in a foreign-devils cluster dating back to the time of the Opium Wars. And clearly one tends to plough one's profits back," Robert Smith, the head of Wall's in China, said.. You can still find relics of another era scattered about Canton. With Nestle's ice-creams about to move in, the focus is on securing a position in the market rather than going for short-term profits."We are expanding very fast. On the streets of Peking, Wall's is now one of the most visible foreign brandnames, just two years after it started ice-cream production in China.