Less than a fortnight ago, Coca-Cola executives were cutting a ribbon on a new $90m innovation and technology centre in Shanghai, having just pledged to invest $2bn in China – more than last year’s total capital spending – by 2012. Now, after a knockback from the ministry of commerce, the group’s plans to acquire the country’s largest juice-maker at a ridiculous premium lie in ribbons. So much for the strategy of buttering up Beijing.

China never really wanted a formal competition regime in the first place. It was a condition of joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001 that China introduced some kind of legislation; it did so last August, producing a law that bears only a passing resemblance to international norms. Article 7 introduces the strange concept of a “lifeline of the national economy” to be protected as a matter of “national security”.