Dipak Patel can still recall the dizzying grandeur of his 2003 visit to Beijing's cavernous Great Hall of the People: the rows of stern guards all the same height, the state dinner with stewed shark fin and bird's nest soup, and the People's Liberation Army band playing songs from Patel's native Zambia. As minister of commerce at the time, Patel had joined the delegation to cement ties and-crucially-secure financing for big-ticket infrastructure initiatives. While most delegates were eager to accept anything they could get for projects such as a hydropower dam and a 50,000-seat soccer stadium, Patel urged caution. "My view was we needed to build a strategic partnership and think it through," he says. "But I was one voice in the cabinet."
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