A trip of enlightenment

Business has grown since then, and now the plant, which supplies Asian markets, employs 500 people. The company also has a research and development center there.

That was only seven years ago, but it feels like 70 years, Manuli says.

That experience reflects another great difference he sees between China and Europe: In China things change at lightning speed, but in Europe change is genteel, even snail-paced.

The company was founded by his grandfather, also called Dardanio Manuli, 78 years ago. In those days, Dardanio junior says, Italy bore many similarities to China today. People moved from poor regions, in Italy's case the south, to the better-off parts of the country, where they toiled away to make better lives for themselves.

For Dardanio Manuli senior that meant upping sticks and moving to the northern city of Milan, where he set up a company that made electrical insulating tape, power cables and rubber hoses. Since then, it has developed into a business with operations worldwide.

Manuli says what helped with growth over the years was that the former Italian currency, the lira, was undervalued, meaning products made in Italy were competitive outside the country compared with those of other European countries.

He says that the advantage, one that helped make Italy prosperous, evaporated when the country adopted the euro in 2002, and its economy has been in decline ever since.

Today's recession is the result of a lack of competitiveness and policy adjustments for many years, he says, and many family businesses in Italy have withered and died.

Manuli, who joined the company 20 years ago, attributes its survival and success to his family's hard work. While the business has generated wealth, it is the ideal of having correct priorities, passed down through the generations, that accounts for its success, he says.

"Bring food to the table first, then think of other things," he quotes his grandfather as saying.

On a trip to Britain recently, he visited a football museum in Manchester and took a photo of a quote by Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager of Manchester United: "Hard work will always overcome natural talent when natural talent does not work hard enough."

The company's annual report last year also looked to the world of sport for inspiration, highlighting a quote by Michael Jordan: "Teamwork wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."

Manuli says that Ferguson's quote encapsulates his belief that to succeed in business "there is no alternative to hard work".

He reckons that spirit is missing in Europe, and that young people, with inherited wealth, are not used to hard work. "People just sit and wait for somebody to help, but the world does not work that way."

When he sees "small emperors" in China, he wonders whether, when they grow up, they will be willing to sacrifice their own pleasure for economic improvement like their parents did.