The story of Daxie Island goes that Rong Yiren, head of the mainland's biggest investment company, chartered a plane to Ningbo with 70 of his staff, was shown this island bigger than Macau and decided to take it over.
The State Council agreed and China International Trust and Investment Corp (Citic) found itself master for 50 years of Daxie Island, 31 square kilometres of farmland on the edge of Zhejiang province in the east, with no electricity, running water or link to the mainland.
The jury is out on whether Mr Rong's idea was a flash of genius or a multimillion-dollar miscalculation.
The experiment of a company running such a large mainland area is unique. Citic collects the taxes, builds the schools and hospitals and pays the policemen and the teachers, as well as playing its normal role as an investor and developer of land for industrial and commercial projects.
Six years on, the octogenarian Mr Rong is living a comfortable retirement in Beijing, after serving as the country's vice-president, while Citic officials grapple with the day-to-day results of what the company calls 'Rong's magnificent decision' Compensating farmers who lose their land for a factory and finding them new jobs, complaints from the old about the late arrival of their pension or health problems and getting a telephone line installed to remote houses all form the average daily routine of an official from Citic.
'Investment in infrastructure here so far is one billion yuan (about HK$931 million), of which Citic has paid 700 million,' said Lin Feng, Citic's top official on Daxie and secretary of the island's Communist Party committee.