On a blustery October day, the remaining fragments of what was once Shanghai’s hottest bar and restaurant are being liquidated. The champagne glasses cost Rmb28 , waistcoats hang from a Rmb1,500 lime-green screen, and a framed poster from the 1930s leans against the wall. M on the Bund closed its doors for the last time in February 2022, in the midst of China’s Zero-Covid policy. By the time its contents were finally sold off last month, they had already become relics of another era.
It added that Shanghai had “basically established” itself as an international financial centre by 2020, that international firms continued to expand in the city, and that financial reform and opening up would “never stop”. For The Asia Group’s Lin, the schemes did amount to some loosening of capital controls over the past decade, but he similarly points to a “slowdown” of that loosening in the last three years.