'In Shanghai there are very, very few pirates' - Shopkeeper Liu Shangtong, speaking at his cluttered one-room shop, Shanghai East Sea Digital Equipment. The store was littered with counterfeit CD-ROMS. One of the discs contained about 50 popular software programs including a new version of Microsoft's Windows 95 that uses simplified Chinese characters, introduced less than three months ago.

'Are we supposed to believe that they were just kidding last year but this year they really mean it?' - Jake van de Kamp, chief economist at HG Asia, tired at the US' annual threats of trade sanctions against China. 'Democrats and republicans alike seem in need of sex education. They seem to think that babies come from welfare cheques' - Patricia Irelan, author of What Women Want.

'Anyone who buys a textile company [in Hong Kong] in the first place must be barking. They're all property companies' - Alexandra Mackesy, smaller companies analyst at SBC Warburg, on investment opportunities in the wake of possible US sanctions on China.