Wearing cuff-links, an oldschool tie and a dark blazer with four gold buttons on each sleeve, he looked like . . . well certainly not like a communist party bureaucrat. But this was comrade Bo Xilai, the mayor of Dalian, one of a new generation of dynamic young leaders to emerge in the entrepreneurial culture of modern China. With his charm, charisma and command of English, Bo Xilai made a stunning impact on his two dozen guests sitting across the table in Dalian city hall, members of an Irish fisheries delegation led by Minister for the Marine, Michael Woods.
The Irish visitors were also highly impressed with Dalian, a city of well-ordered streets and soaring glass palaces, which the mayor wants to transform into the Hong Kong of northern China. He has already made the northeastern seaport a booming entre-pot through foreign investment, with big industries and modern hotels like the Furama and the Shangri-La.
There is much evidence of money in Dalian, where shopping malls bear designer names like Giorgio Armani, Cerruti, and Gieves & Hawkes (naval tailors and outfitters by appointment to HRH the Duke of Edinburgh). Modern lingerie and electronics shops line the passages of an underground city constructed in 1970 when Chairman Mao ordered citizens to "dig tunnels deep" in case of war.
Dalian also models itself on squeaky-clean Singapore. It was certified as China's first "rat-free city" following a blitz by rodent exterminators a decade ago. Citizens get cash awards for reporting rude taxi-drivers. They themselves are fined two yuan (15p) if they spit in the railway station.
Followers of the Dalian leaguechampion soccer club are even encouraged not to shout obscenities at opposing teams. "We don't want our soccer fans to be hooligans as in England," says Zhang Jianshu, secretary of the Dalian Fan Club.
Like Hong Kong, Dalian is a place apart because of foreign influence. Once known as Port Arthur, it was ceded to Russia's Tsar Nicholas in 1898 as an icefree port. His architects designed a city of circular parks with radiating avenues lined by Europeanstyle public buildings. Greencoloured trams still rumble along tracks laid down by the Russians.
The Japanese captured the city in 1905 and occupied it until 1945, when they were driven out by the Soviet Army, an event commemorated in Stalin Avenue and by a huge Soviet war memorial featuring a Russian soldier with a tommy gun.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Dalian is that during their occupation the Japanese continued to build in European style, and modern Dalian has many old red-brick residences which would not be out of place in middle-class Bray. There is a magnificent hospital made from Manchurian granite, art deco buildings in ice-cream colours and rows of English-type houses with half-timbered gables.
"In those days they spared no effort to build things as beautifully as possible," wrote Tess Johnston in Far from Home, her book on the architecture of China's treaty ports. "Now they spare no effort to build them as quickly and cheaply as possible. Is this progress?" Indeed fine old buildings are disappearing in the construction frenzy and many of the glitzy towers which replace them are not up to Hong Kong standards.
The Japanese are back in Dalian now in the form of businessmen and investors. There are 1,500 Japanese enterprises in the city, Bo Xilai said, along with 700 from the US, 600 from Korea and 2,000 from Hong Kong. Foreign delegations come all the time. This weekend the accents of Kerry and Donegal mingled in the hotel lobby with the Canadian French of a 200-strong Quebec business delegation. The Irish visitors were interested primarily in exchanges of technological information and trading links with the huge Dalian seafood industry. Its aquatic catch last year was 35 million tonnes compared to Ireland's 30,000. And they still need more. One of the biggest eyeopeners was the sheer size of the breeding plant outside Dalian for abalone, a mollusk popular in China and Japan whose shell is used for mother-of-pearl. Lines of abalone cultivation stretched to the horizon of the Yellow Sea.
Mr Patrick Ridge, chairman of the Irish Sea Fisheries Board, saw great potential in the possibilities of exploiting niche markets for quality Irish seafood, and thereby helping secure a future for Irish fishing, one of the few major industries in Ireland not concentrated in a 40-mile radius around Dublin.
Dr Woods emphasised to Dalian fishery executives that developing such trade with China was now a high priority of the Government. Two Irish officials, Donal Maguire and Dr Terence O'Carroll, would be sent on a longer follow-up visit to Dalian to identify opportunities.
China has a growing market for seafood, said Bo Xilai, who as the son of a revolutionary elder known as one of China's `princelings'. "In the past China was poor and the people ate simple food," he said. "Now we are becoming richer, the Chinese market is growing fast." He added, smiling, "we need fish especially in the northern part of China where the people are tall and strong and eat a lot".