On their first day of class at the Communist party’s management school in Shanghai, students make a pilgrimage to a small museum commemorating the 1921 meeting of 13 activists who founded what has become the world’s largest political organisation.

But the museum does more than teach the students, all up-and-coming party officials, about the history of communism in China. Getting there provides an education of a different kind, as the students must first wend their way through a smartly refurbished city district, crawling with upscale eateries and expensive apartments.