We had not seen one another for months and my friend had not been much in touch in the meantime but now he was eager that we should meet as soon as possible. I found him on a high stool in a Mexican restaurant, tapping his foot against the table, wound tight with excitement and bursting to tell me his news. The only son of a policeman and a judge, my friend is in his mid-30s and works for an international company where his pay and prospects are good. But much of his mental energy goes on his personal entrepreneurial projects, most of them involving social media and none until now achieving any success. More than a year ago, he showed up at my door with a cameraman for an impromptu interview and a tour of my flat. This was supposed to be part of a series that would drive engagement and build a community of followers to whom he could offer paid services. “The engagement with yours was not good. Nobody watched it,” he told me. Later, he tried to draw his mother out of retirement to offer online advice on the law but after a couple of videos showing her looking stiff and painfully uncomfortable, he gave up. Other failed ventures included short videos aimed at foreigners featuring common Chinese words and an online singing course with a musician in his native Inner Mongolia. [ Inner Mongolia, where China strives to balance environmental, economic and ethnic ambitionsOpens in new window ] It was during a visit to Inner Mongolia a few months ago that he settled on his latest idea, after considering the three sports the region is famous for: wrestling, riding and archery. Data from platforms such as Amazon and Temu told him that the American market in archery products had growth potential so he found a factory in Hebei province that makes arrows. He bought 5,000 sets, each with 10 arrows, rebranded them and offered them to American consumers on one of the big online platforms. They flew off the shelves and for a short while his brand became the top selling arrows on the platform. He has taken a stake in the factory and he now wants to take on the two rival brands that are market leaders, but for that he needs more capital and he is trying to raise it from his friends. I told him he could stop looking at me and asked if he had spoken to his parents. “They’re very traditional so they only see the risk but I’m still working on them. If I can persuade them I can persuade anyone,” he said. He started explaining the various forms of investment he was willing to accept and the basis on which he calculated that the risk that investors would lose their capital was low. I changed the subject, asking if he was going to introduce a Mongolian element into the branding for the arrows. [ Social media successes and pitfalls live side by side in China tooOpens in new window ] “I don’t want to use my imagination. I just want to copy everything. That’s why westerners hate Chinese people,” he said. “The market is already there. You just have to follow it. If you start using your imagination you lose.” The idea that Chinese manufacturing is not innovative is persistent, and at the lower end of the value chain there is some truth in it. But in everything from electric vehicles to artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese firms are rivalling or overtaking their western counterparts. The annual legislative session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), which ended this week, was dominated by the Communist Party’s vision of China as a global leader in AI. DeepSeek has emerged as a lower-cost alternative to ChatGPT and this month saw the emergence of Manus, a Chinese AI agent that can perform complex, real-world tasks. Innovative or not, Chinese manufacturing is the most successful in the world but now might not be the most auspicious moment to enter the American market. Donald Trump has already put a 20 per cent tariff on all goods imported from China and he has threatened to increase the levy to 60 per cent or more. “If they put a 25 per cent tariff on, I’ll put the price up 25 per cent. They can put a 100 per cent tariff on and it won’t matter,” my friend said. His American competitors source components and materials for their arrows from China so my friend reckoned Trump’s tariffs will hit them too, pushing their prices up also. By now, he had given up trying to recruit me as an investor but he had another idea for how I might be useful. “I need a westerner to pose as a model for the marketing. You could do it. For archery, you want someone mature and you don’t need anyone handsome,” he said.