As part of this weekend’s business lunch issue of the magazine, we asked FT staff and contributors for their favourite places to eat in and around the City, and which table they like to sit at. From hallowed institutions to secret gardens, here are their top picks.

For tradition

Arlington

It’s as if Le Caprice, formerly on this site, never left. Both the old and new restaurants are excellent for business. Perhaps it’s because it’s not easy to get a table, and there’s a cachet to having a good position, or because you’ll bump into well known business or celebrity faces, or simply that you’ll always have a delicious meal.

Nearest station: Green Park

Where to sit: Past the bar, second table on the right near the window (if you can get past the restaurant’s official policy of not reserving specific tables)

— James Max, Rich People’s Problems columnist

Sweetings

Where better for a business lunch than a City stalwart that only opens on weekdays at lunchtime? Sweetings has been serving seafood to London’s bankers and brokers for well over a century. On a recent visit I ended up sat with a septuagenarian property investor who has been a regular for 50 years. After a few hours there you may lose track of which decade you are in, particularly if you order their signature drink, the Black Velvet, a heady mix of Guinness and champagne served in a pewter tankard. Stick to one if you need to return to the office afterwards, trust me.

Nearest station: Mansion House

Where to sit: There are no reservations at Sweetings. Sit where you’re told to

— Robert Smith, corporate finance editor

Wiltons

For a couple of decades, I was too intimidated to enter Wiltons. I would pass the entrance fairly often on my way to and from The Economist’s old offices, and see red-faced men in double-breasted suits tumbling out after a long lunch. But when I finally dared to cross the threshold, it quickly became apparent to me that this was the ideal spot for a business lunch. The tables are widely spaced and the surrounding conversation rarely seems to rise above a polite murmur. The menu and wine list are agreeably predictable. Also, it’s expensive, so it’s really best if somebody else is picking up the tab. The red-faced old men no longer intimidate me. Perhaps I have become one myself?

Nearest station: Green Park

Where to sit: A booth in the main room

— Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator

Otto’s 

Don’t come to Otto’s when it’s summer or if you’re doing dry January or if you’re pressed for time. Come when the days are drawing in, when you have a voracious appetite and you’re up for a lengthy lunch. Then sink into the red velvet banquettes (inspired by legendary Parisian establishment Maxim’s) and enjoy the best example of classic French dining this side of the Channel. Otto’s is most famous for its Canard à la Presse, a duck extravaganza spread out over three courses, and served, if you’re lucky, by owner Otto Tepasse. The restaurant commands a loyal following of local business people and lawyers, and is thankfully off the tourist track.

Nearest station: Chancery Lane

Where to sit: When asked, director Elin Hansen sent a breakdown of how she matchmakes every table. Table 1 is the “establishment table”; table 5 for lovers; table 4 for young people and table 9 for meetings

— Harriet Agnew, asset management editor

The Delaunay

Noisy enough not to be easily overheard, but not so noisy you cannot be heard at all, this is the owners’ successful attempt to reapply the formula that made sister restaurant, The Wolseley, Piccadilly’s business-breakfast venue of choice. The Delaunay’s catchment area of Fleet Street, the Inns of Court and the City and an undemanding menu of mittel-European comfort food means it is usually full for lunch. Later, the networking and business gossip is leavened with pre- and post-theatre chat from the Covent Garden crowd.

Nearest station: Covent Garden

Where to sit: A booth near the window on the western side

— Andrew Hill, senior business writer

For food

Luca

My favourite spot for a business lunch is Luca, an Italian restaurant near Farringdon. The set menu in the bar area is the best value in a London Michelin-starred restaurant (£32 for two courses, £38 for three). The area is quickly becoming the hotspot destination for quality restaurants in the City. Nearby, Bouchon Racine has perfect lighting, good vibes and elegant food. Something about it just hits the spot. Best of all, you’ll never run into someone you know at either.

Nearest station: Farringdon

Where to sit: Co-founder Daniel Willis says the best seat in the bar is the middle booth, table 103

— Arash Massoudi, finance and markets editor

Hawksmoor Guildhall

Red meat is very much on the menu at Hawksmoor Guildhall, the subterranean oak-panelled steakhouse that has become a City institution since opening in 2011. Its old-world charm is a big hit with foreign bankers, with low lighting, brown leather chairs and a well-stocked cocktail bar. And of course its famed steaks. More affordable deals are also available. A three-course meal is offered at lunchtime or early evening for £33. An ice-cold Shaky Pete’s, an ale and gin cocktail mixed with lemon juice and ginger, is well worth a try.

Nearest station: Bank

Where to sit: Hawksmoor co-founder Huw Gott says his favourite tables across the London restaurants are table 45 at Wood Wharf (for two) and table 43 at Air Street (for four)

— Owen Walker, European banking correspondent

St John Smithfield

I stopped doing business lunches in 2008. Just the thought of being away from my desk for three hours in the middle of the day gives me indigestion. In the event I really, really like someone, however, I will concede to a meeting at St John, where I will expect my guest to share a Welsh rarebit and a big blousy green salad. The leaves are nightmarishly tricky to eat, hence the lunch will be a test of our relationship. Will you still love me when we fail to discuss any pressing professional matters whatsoever and I am covered in vinaigrette and bits of lettuce? That, my friend, is someone I can work with.

Nearest station: Farringdon

Where to sit: The bar, never the restaurant. (There are no reservations, but head chef Jonathan Whittle says he likes the tables to the side of the bar best)

— Jo Ellison, HTSI editor and FT Weekend deputy editor

BiBi

Hidden away in a pocket of Mayfair, this tiny restaurant packs a punch. Small plates, British produce and Indian-inspired dishes, but not as you know them. Best for one-on-one meetings, secret squirrel conversations or for those who like eating at the counter. It’s fine dining without the fustiness and business friendly without the suit-and-tie vibe. It’s hard to imagine any bad choices on the à la carte or tasting menus, with chaat and grilled selections that surprise and delight.

Nearest station: Marble Arch

Best seat: A booth

— Anjli Raval, management editor

For privacy

Cloth

I look for somewhere that’s buzzy but where you can talk without being overheard at the next table, which rules out most of London’s fancy but cramped restaurants. My new favourite lunch spot, if wine is involved, is Cloth on Cloth Fair. I have never liked the steely, shiny side of the City, and this is a nod to its far more ancient roots, a wine bar with amazing bottles and very good food (including proper non-aubergine-based choices for veggies like me) in an old townhouse in Smithfield.

Nearest station: Barbican

Where to sit: Director Joe Haynes says table 21 is the house favourite — near the entrance, next to the window

— Isabel Berwick, Working It host and editor

Kerridge’s Bar & Grill

Admittedly, the Embankment is not prime business lunch territory. But the upside is that the grand dining room at Kerridge’s Bar & Grill tends to be a discreet place to meet. The leather banquettes and club chairs even have half screens rising above them for further privacy. This is the place to go when you do not wish to be disturbed or overheard. The food is both precise and premium.

Nearest station: Embankment

Where to sit: The restaurant declined to give numbers, but said that the best tables are two six-seaters referred to internally as the “Robi Walters tables”

— Malcolm Moore, energy editor

Toklas

Toklas has everything. Unfussy, tasty food served briskly. A Sydney-standard outdoor terrace. Well spaced tables, all the better for ears-only chat. And best of all, it’s down a side street, in a weird looking building, well off the beaten biz lunch track, so you will be very unlucky to bump into anyone you know. If you want to go cheap and cheerful, there’s also a Toklas bakery and café a few doors down.

Nearest station: Temple

Best seat: Maître d’ Alcides Gauto says the booths under the Wolfgang Tillmans are popular with regulars

— Pilita Clark, business columnist

Garden Café

I often want to meet people somewhere that will put them at ease. In a quiet, fairly random pocket of London, the Garden Café at the Garden Museum does just that. It is unpretentious, perhaps because it doesn’t need to manifest an identity when it somehow pulls off a restaurant, museum café, church graveyard and courtyard garden all at once. The food (modern British and European) is simple and exquisite. It is served in an airy yet intimate hideaway of copper-cladding, glass walls and lush planting. Best of all, most people don’t know it’s there.

Nearest station: Lambeth North

Where to sit: The red tables in the courtyard garden

— Antonia Cundy, special investigations reporter

For convenience

Enoteca da Luca

If you work in the City, the trio of Enoteca da Luca modern Italian restaurants are the ideal spot for an understated get-together. My favourite is the compact Watling Street site, all smart banquettes and exposed brick, just round the corner from FT HQ. The Basinghall Street outpost, a short walk away near the Guildhall, has a similar vibe. Insurance workers in and around the Lloyd’s quarter can take advantage of a delightful outdoor terrace at the larger Devonshire Square site. The restaurants have slightly different menus, but all excel at a range of modern Italian classics, both tapas-style and full-size, with an excellent Italian wine list to boot.

Nearest station: Mansion House

Where to sit: At Watling Street, the cosy table in the rear left corner, table 18, is best for two

— Patrick Jenkins, deputy editor

Taberna Etrusca

I love Italy and particularly love Italian food, which, at its most enjoyable, is appetising, varied and unpretentious. So it is my good fortune that within a few minutes of the FT’s office in Friday Street is the Taberna Etrusca, dating from 1967, located in Bow Churchyard, run by Italians and styled as a classically Italian trattoria. Its food is also classically Italian, indeed Tuscan. I normally have an antipasto or pasta. If I am feeling greedy, I have both. I rarely have a secondo (main course). I like to finish my meal with vanilla gelato affogato — a gelato with espresso poured on top. Service is excellent and friendly.

Nearest station: St Paul’s

Where to sit: The outdoor area, which you can enter from the back

— Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator

For novelty

Stem + Stem

A relatively new restaurant and florist tucked away down Bow Lane, in the heart of the City. Unlike many traditional business lunch haunts, the restaurant is light and airy and adorned with hanging plants and flowers, creating a little oasis of calm in the bustling financial district. The restaurant is small and intimate, but there is enough space between tables, helping to ensure a degree of privacy. It offers a decent wine list for those meetings that involve a tipple. 

Nearest station: Mansion House 

Where to sit: Near the window looking out over Bow Lane, table 3 or 4 (the latter has a better view) 

— Emma Dunkley, asset management reporter 

Beigel Bake

I’ve always found that high-tone people don’t mind being taken to low-tone places. They feel a little edgy, a little free. Some of the most successful business lunches I’ve had were over salt-beef bagels (yes to pickles and mustard) from the bagel shop on Brick Lane with the white sign (not the yellow). One starched tablecloth is much like another, but a claggy hunk of cheesecake to follow your bagel — that’s memorable. 

Nearest station: Shoreditch High St

Where to sit: A park bench. There are several pocket parks in a five minute radius

— Josh Spero, associate arts editor

What’s your favourite business lunch restaurant in London? Let us know by leaving a comment below. Best table suggestions encouraged!

NORTH Korea’s failed version of a Disneyland paradise has remained open despite its rickety and rusting rides sitting beyond repair.

The lacklustre Mangyongdae theme park is a picture of sadness today with hardly any genuine visitors walking through the decaying front gates.

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A rollercoaster, giant swing, merry-go-round and even a mini bullet train feature in the park but worrying images of the desolate attractions show how little it has been cared for overtime.

The once bright and colourful rides are now turning a depressing shade of brown after years of rusting away.

Harrowing pictures show glum parents sitting with their kids on the corroding rides.

It was even slammed by tyrant leader Kim Jong Un in the early 2010s for having a dismal atmosphere and being in a run-down condition.

Staff at the park were even told they have “below-zero spirit” by the dictator, Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency reported.

His scathing comments promoted the site to undergo a renovation project in 2012 with very little being shown of the results of the work through North Korea‘s tight media laws.

The park was first opened in 1982 and sits just 12km from the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and takes up a whopping 700,000sqm.

Despite the impressive size the activities fail to live up to expectations with hardly any returning customers.

This is also due to a number of concerning allegations against the safety at Mangyongdae.

Tourists have claimed they were left with unlocked harnesses as they set off on treacherous rides.

Others say park engineers would be on the look out for loose screws and dodgy holes as customers boarded the rides, say MailOnline.

The main attraction is an ageing looped rollercoaster that was built under the watchful eye of North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il-sung.

Outside of the decaying and death-defying rides a number of sad game stalls are littered across the complex as well.

Pictures show a young girl with a gun shooting at targets which are said to be of imperialist and US aggressors towards North Korea.

The odd attraction is also only cornered off by a wooden beam and a red sheet.

Next to her sits a makeshift basketball net and a small green ball as well as a set of rusty cans to be knocked down.

A bizarre dog sanctuary is also sat in the middle of the park with crumbling kennels and overgrown grass.

It has even been alleged by the handful of shocked journalists allowed to enter the park that crowds of locals are rounded up and shipped off to spend the day looking cheery.

Their job is to seemingly make the place look slightly livelier, according to those who have witnessed it.

It was announced last month that North Korea is set to reopen its doors to tourists for the first time after a five-year lockdown.

The secretive regime will allow in overseas visitors for the first time since the pandemic meaning the current state of the theme park may finally be revealed.

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My first boss was one of the world’s greatest lunchers. Editor of a magazine about the film, television, advertising and music video industries in the 1990s, a decade when you could have a perfectly respectable career in the audiovisual world without ever troubling to produce anything, she was a legend in Soho. She would take me to lunch at the boozy hidey-hole Andrew Edmunds, the vast and chrome-sparkly Terence Conran megalopolis Mezzo or the perfect institution Vasco & Piero’s Pavilion. Everywhere we went, she would be warmly welcomed, air kissed and visited by industry luminaries from the surrounding tables. As we staggered back to the office, I’d feel inducted into a way of life.

She taught me many things about journalism, but the most important thing she taught me about working life was that relationships endure and relationships created over lunch endure for decades. Work in television halted between 1pm and 3pm, and being able to secure a table at Sheekey’s or The Ivy between these hours was something to boast of unironically. Name-dropping the proposed restaurant was a way to secure a meeting. An opening glass of champagne and a half bottle of Chablis was standard. With hindsight it’s less of a mystery why so many working relationships were, er, problematic.

Thus, starting out, I most often found myself the junior partner in meals with the most celebrated and self-mythologised lunchers — men in media. These were invariably booked through assistants who hinted at the unimaginable glamour of their fixed reservation at a top-flight restaurant (“He lunches on Wednesdays, will Nobu in four weeks suit?”). I had no complaints. I was paid £13,500 in my first job in 1995, but no one would blink if I filed an expense claim for an £80 lunch. My answer to the conspiratorial question, “Shall we have a look at the pudding menu?” was always “Yes”, because then I could skip the expense of dinner. The media men of the 1990s stole my cigarettes and taught me how to drink at lunch (I did once have to go and lie down in the sick bay after a three-hour spectacular). I learnt it was important I fight to pick up the tab (flattering to one’s senior), occasionally give in graciously (“my turn next time”), pass on as much gossip as I pick up, fair trade being no robbery, and always ask about the wife and kids. Of course, it was a ridiculously inefficient way to do business. In a sense, that was part of it. My skin still prickles with mortification remembering the time I kept the controller of BBC1 waiting because I was stuck in traffic and he had to eat soup alone. The shame!

When men talk nostalgically about the golden days of lunching, the well-brought up now remember to caveat it with a reminder that they were, of course, a terrible boy’s club. But they only remember the lunches they were present at. At the turn of the millennium, all over the media, women breaking through glass ceilings were eyeing how the men were doing it, and it’s fair to say we rose to the challenge.

I was lucky enough to be part of girl gangs who had boxes at the races and the dogs, went gambling at the Ritz casino, took private rooms at Nobu and the River Cafe and special tables at The Wolseley or The Ivy. Events at which eight or 10 of us, from cabinet ministers to newspaper editors to TV channel bosses and mega TV producers, would prove women bond just as successfully over vast amounts of booze and jollity, and absolutely behave just as badly. I can recall public singing, an incident where two fierce egos challenged each other to an arm wrestle, someone demonstrating how you’d add sign language to porn to comply with new regulation and the destruction of a rather beautiful hat.

We were loud, but we were few. It was not until I moved to New York in the 2010s that I realised women networking over lunch was a global game. A PR as kind as she was mighty organised a welcome lunch at Michael’s, a media powerhouse restaurant in Manhattan of such stature that network presidents had regular tables and the front desk would tweet daily lists of the execs and celebs who had crossed the threshold. She invited only women. I was the editor of a yet-to-launch website, and I couldn’t understand why anyone would come, but we all ended up in Page Six, New York’s reigning gossip column, so someone knew what they were doing. The guests brought gifts of Diane Von Furstenberg scarves and recommendations of eyebrow groomers. This was a serious step up from our “feminine” traditions in London of lovely, handwritten thank-you notes on arty postcards, and the fact we’d actually remembered the names of each other’s children.

In New York, I recognised that I was being admitted to a set where the rules were subtly different. Contact building was about rapid intimacy accelerated by expenditure but not necessarily on dining. A journalist once invited me for lunch but led with “I know you live near me and have a daughter about the same age as mine, why don’t we take you both for mani-pedis?” Now that’s a fresh take on a life-work balance.

Do we blame the internet or the budgets for the slowing down of the lunch invitations? In a sense, the internet separated the advertising from the media and as the revenues went programmatic, so did the contacts. Those who inducted me are now very sadly starting to leave for the great never-ending lunch. Let’s be honest, it’s not a lifestyle associated with longevity.

All that was left were the sorts of lunches I wouldn’t have been seen dead at back in the day: the ones that sold tickets, beginning with the words “Women in”, often run by a brave senior woman in an organisation full of men, trying to facsimile the clubs to which they weren’t invited. The problem with these lunches wasn’t their intentions, but the lack of spontaneity in execution. There’s little opportunity to bond in a speed networking event. And, in truth, the few actual powerful women in any given industry had no availability between work events and family.

This is not to deny the benefits of more formal networking. The rules of entry to the informal kind are opaque and excluding, and I can’t pretend that my girl gang was any more thoughtful about our various privileges than our male counterparts. I remember taking some younger colleagues out for lunch at a fancy Edinburgh restaurant to hear their hopes and dreams, hoping to show them that I thought them important, but realised immediately it was way too formal and I risked doing the opposite. It’s undeniably healthier that young women can now express ambition through application for mentorships and paid trainee schemes. I will never, though, get over my fundamental disapproval of a po-faced event where, after one glass of warm white wine, everyone exchanges a business card.

When I invite people to lunch now, they are pleased but baffled. I feel slightly as if I’ve sent a coachman round with a calling card. These brutal days of computerised booking schedules and automated emails are of course more efficient and more democratic, but the clout, ladies! The sheer clout of wandering into a “famed eatery in London’s West End” to be greeted by a glass of champagne and “Congratulations on your promotion.” You would never feel you were in the wrong club and neither would your lunch guest.

Except, except! Perhaps there is still another way. On a recent trip to Manhattan, where everything happens first, a former colleague and expert networker announced that lunch and Midtown and power restaurants are back, along with everything ’90s. The personal connection, the intimate confessional bonding, the sense of order in a chaotic world established by a maître d’ knowing your name and which table you like, an antidote to anonymity and social media socialising. How thrilling and relieving.

My advice for women who would like to participate in this throwback trend is as it was handed down to me by my foresisters. Consolidate your expense account spending. Blow your budget in one or two restaurants and those restaurants will repay your loyalty. Invite people out. These days you can split the bill, but nothing says “I enjoyed this and we’re doing it again” like “You can do next time.” Make your own gang. Invite someone from your world and get a pal to do likewise. Do not underestimate the power of a small sin, be it pudding or booze or being slightly late back to work, and always, always, order chips for the table.

It’s unlikely that I’ll be a leading light in this hopeful new wave. True networking should be for your twenties when all lies ahead and you can still tolerate alcohol before 6pm. But if you’re lucky, not only will you learn so much more about your job, you’ll gain a bit of life too.

My best ever lunch started perfectly straightforwardly with a senior TV executive I barely knew. Somehow, at 5pm, it was still going on, as the staff around us began relaying the tables for dinner service, pausing only to reassure us that though life must go on around us, they didn’t want us to feel we should take a hint. “We love that you’re still here,” they egged us on. It finished at 7.30pm when she revealed she had to go to a dinner with Rupert Murdoch. She remains my closest friend and godmother to my child, but we lunch on our own time these days.

Janine Gibson is FT Weekend editor

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In the heart of Xinjiang, the Chinese region where more than one million Uyghurs are believed to be detained in re-education camps, two carefree British travel vloggers cheerfully introduce their viewers to “one of the most controversial areas” of the country.

Journalists are harassed and heavily monitored in the rugged western province, where Western governments and rights groups have accused the authorities of suppressing Muslim minorities through mass surveillance, abuse and political indoctrination.

But foreign YouTube influencers are warmly welcomed by the normally censor-happy Chinese government, which seizes on their happy-go-lucky content to legitimise its own narrative that no human rights abuses are taking place.

“Nice, fancy Mustangs,” says one of the British vloggers, admiring sports cars on the streets of Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi. “It’s like a normal city, so what’s all the hype about? Negative hype as well. I don’t understand that,” he says.

It’s a message that chimes well with China’s own state propaganda machine.

As the country reopens for travel after years of pandemic isolation, foreign influencers, including many Brits, are heading East armed with cameras and tripods, eyeing an increasingly lucrative YouTube market with an eager audience ready to increase their ratings.

The Chinese government has given them a helping hand with a raft of new visa-free policies, and the country received over 17 million foreign travellers in the first seven months of this year, up by almost 130% year-on-year, according to foreign ministry figures.

“I myself have watched a good number of videos by foreign vloggers sharing their trips in China. I’m happy to see more and more foreign friends come to China and fall in love with China,” said Lin Jian, a foreign ministry spokesperson in August.

Many marvel at the bright lights of Shanghai’s skyline, Beijing’s imperial palaces and the impressive high speed rail network.

But a growing number are entering lesser-known regions including Xinjiang, which for years has been beset by allegations of severe human rights abuses and repression that Beijing justifies as necessary to fight terrorism.

Some YouTubers setting foot in the rugged region attempt to draw viewers with sensational titles about exposing Western media “lies” about Xinjiang or by alluding to the risks of travelling there.

But they often stress they are not pushing any narrative other than to see Xinjiang with their own eyes and to offer their viewers authentic firsthand accounts.

In a video titled “This is the XINJIANG the Western Media DON’T want you to see”, young Scottish couple Alan and Shannon explore Kashgar’s tourist district and dress in Uyghur traditional outfits for a photoshoot.

Another Briton, Mike Okay, 28, offers a grittier, and at times humourous experience as he hitchhikes through the province in search of a toilet or a carpark or campsite to sleep in. He documents multiple identity checks by police officers, surprised by his travel methods, but not unfriendly.

Some videos have more political undertones, explicitly contrasting their content with media reports.

In Urumqi, Tauseef Ahmed, with partner Libby Collins, comments that “if you relied on the Western media..then you wouldn’t normally hear anything positive,” and cites the oppression of Muslims as an example of typical accusations.

As the couple walk through Urumqi, they point out mosques. They also comment on the higher number of surveillance cameras, but add: “if you haven’t done anything wrong then there is nothing to be worried about.”

There is no suggestion any of the vloggers are acting at the behest of the Chinese government or receiving its money, but titles about media deception echo official state messaging about the West’s perceived anti-China narrative, particularly on fundamental rights.

For China, the influx of influencers offers the opportunity to rebut overseas criticisms and reinforce its stance through highlighting the unimpeded visits of awestruck foreigners.

The footage, amplified by Chinese social media platforms and state-run outlets, receive hundreds of thousands of views and screeds of favourable comments.

An increasing number of international vloggers were visiting Xinjiang “with great curiosity,” noted a recent article in the Global Times.

“A somewhat remote and mysterious region in China, Xinjiang is nonetheless a name constantly spotlighted in many Western media stories, which are usually filled with misinformation.”

It namechecks Mike Okay among several vloggers, highlighting a conversation with a campsite owner who says police checks are for his own safety.

It then rams home the government line that enhanced security in Xinjiang “is not an overreaction” due to the threat of terrorism from religious extremists and ethnic separatists.

Mike Okay, who described his trip as a “wild adventure” with “incredible people” said he had tried hard to avoid politics and focus on simply showing a “relatively unexplored” part of the world.

“As a content creator when you sign up..you are putting your content out into the world. People are going to read it however they like. So of course it concerns me,” he said.

“My intention was not to go there and disprove anything. My intention was ‘what does it look like if a clueless relatively uneducated foreigner walks around Xinjiang with a camera’?”

Daria Impiombato, a cyber analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has co-written several reports on China’s multilayered ways of folding local and foreign influencers into its propaganda strategy.

She said vloggers with large platforms had a responsibility to inform themselves and to be sceptical.

“There needs to be a reckoning with that type of platform,” she said. “It’s like influencers who are going to Syria, just doing travel vlogs from Syria without talking about years and years of war and devastation. You can’t do that, and you can’t do that in Xinjiang either.”

But she stopped short of saying influencers should not go to Xinjiang, adding that some videos offered nuggets of valuable information.

Australian couple Michael and Josie, the creators of “josieliftsthings”, a YouTube channel with nearly 1m followers, raise questions in their Xinjiang video about the destruction of historical buildings in Kashgar and observe that the town centre appears to be set up for tourists.

They said their frankness had generated “heat” from viewers and made the video less popular as it wasn’t purely positive.

YouTubers had realised that “pro-China” content attracted more views, making it more profitable, they said.

“It’s a business decision and it comes down to whether you are honest about what you see or you are doing it for the cash,” said Michael.

“The reality of it is that it is a bit of a gold rush at the moment,” he said, adding that the couple were unlikely to return soon as the influencer scene had turned “a little bit ugly”.

“I do get very disappointed when I see a lot of YouTubers who use human rights as bait for their content and then say something in their video like ‘I’m here and..it looks completely normal,” he said.

“We never say everything is fine because we don’t know that,” added Josie. Scottish YouTubers Alan and Shannon did not respond to requests for comment.

Tauseef Ahmed and Libby Collins declined an interview and permission to feature their content. In a previous interview with the New York Times, Mr Ahmed said he did not worry about how their content was used by Chinese propaganda or others.

“At the end of the day, people can give it any narrative they want. It’s just two people going around and recording their travel adventures,” he said.

Maya Wang, the associate China director at Human Rights Watch, urged travellers to be more aware in societies suffering human right abuses and “not be complicit in the censorship and disinformation that the Chinese government hopes to achieve.”

But Prof Steve Tsang, the director of the SOAS China Institute, said vlogger videos were unlikely to sway already entrenched opinions about the Uyghurs.

The top priority for Chinese officials was how everything was seen in Beijing, he said.

“The propaganda machinery will be able to report back up the chain of command all the way through .. to Xi Jinping that we are doing it and doing it well, we are seizing and controlling the narrative.”

Five years since its last rescue and only months before the start of work on a Royal Navy contract that was supposed to secure its future, Harland & Wolff, the builder of the Titanic, is on the rocks again.

An ill-focused strategy and galloping costs pushed the insolvent parent company into administration this week, putting 1,200 jobs at four yards and one of the most illustrious names in British shipbuilding on the line.

The clock is now ticking in the race to find a buyer — or buyers — for the 163-year-old Belfast operation and yards in England and Scotland in an effort to keep vital defence contracting in the UK.

Trevor Taylor, director of the defence, industries and society programme at the think-tank Royal United Services Institute, said the choice of H&W for the Royal Navy contract “was always a giant risk given the minimal labour force and limited manufacturing infrastructure that they had in place”.

An “effective rescue” of the four yards, he added, was needed to “maintain any credibility for the National Shipbuilding Strategy”.

Despite the cash flow problems at the parent company, H&W had been expanding the historic Belfast shipyard and its apprentice scheme in readiness for a traditional steel-cutting ceremony early next year to mark the start of work on three Royal Navy ships — the first vessels to roll down its slipway in over two decades.

The £1.6bn Fleet Solid Support (FSS) contract, secured in 2022 by a consortium led by Spain’s Navantia — and involving final construction and assembly at H&W’s Belfast yard — had appeared a lifeline for the ailing shipbuilder.

Belfast, dominated by H&W’s famous yellow cranes, is receiving most of the £77mn of FSS investment and is expanding its main fabrication hall.

A global giant in its early-20th century heyday and once Northern Ireland’s largest employer, the flagship Belfast yard finally looked set to emerge from decades of decline that had been exacerbated by stiff competition from cheaper Asian competitors and other, better-capitalised UK defence contractors.

But analysts say the firm, which was rescued from administration in 2019 by energy infrastructure group InfraStrata, lost its way and ran out of cash.

“The costs built up at a much quicker rate than the revenue came in,” said interim executive chair Russell Downs, an experienced restructuring expert.

Unaudited results, published in July, showed revenues more than tripled to £87mn in 2023 from the year before, while operating losses more than halved to £24.7mn. But interest costs rose 50 per cent to £18.4mn. 

H&W bought three more yards after its rescue by the then CEO John Wood — Appledore in Devon in south-west England plus Scottish facilities at Methil in Fife and Arnish in the Hebrides — and pivoted to a range of energy, renewables and cruise liner refurbishment operations, as well as non-core activities such as a Scilly Isles ferry.

A probe is now under way into allegations of “misallocation” of £25mn and other spending for “little or no corporate benefit”, underlining H&W’s weak financial oversight. No one has been named or wrongdoing established.

Harland & Wolf is one more headache for the UK’s new Labour government as it battles industrial crises ranging from British Steel in Scunthorpe and Tata Steel in Wales to the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland and Thames Water in south-east England.

Its refusal to grant a key £200mn loan guarantee in July, which could have enabled H&W to unlock cheaper funding, left the London-based parent company scrambling for finance. US lender, Riverstone, which had already lent H&W $115mn, granted an emergency $25mn loan in August. Most of this has already been spent, according to people briefed on the situation.

The shipbuilder was by then “insolvent — and not a little bit insolvent, but a lot insolvent”, Downs said. H&W’s failure to clinch the government facility sealed its fate. “It went wrong because [H&W] got turned down and they had no fallback,” he said.

Freddy Khalastchi, business recovery partner at consultancy Menzies, said H&W had been hobbled by cash flow problems since 2019 — possibly in part because of the Covid pandemic — and never turned a profit.

Downs announced this week he was appointing Teneo as administrator and hoped to sell the four yards together within weeks.

Only the Belfast yard, which employs some 600 and has two of the biggest dry docks in Europe, and Appledore are involved in the FSS contract.

“Clearly the purchaser’s main target will be the jewels in the crown [Belfast and Appledore] because of the income the FSS contract generates and also because of the future opportunities this could bring,” said Khalastchi.

Buying H&W might make the most sense for Navantia, analysts say — fuelling union fears that shipbuilding and jobs could be lost to Spain, leading to job losses in Northern Ireland, one of the poorest parts of the UK.

The consortium led by the Spanish state firm clinched the FSS contract two years ago after beating an all-UK bid that included defence contractors BAE Systems and Babcock International​​. All three declined to comment on their interest in buying all of H&W or just the Belfast yard.

Kate Forbes, Scotland’s deputy first minister, has noted the “economic opportunities” for the Methil and Arnish yards and a global defence contractor has expressed interest in acquiring the Scottish business, according to one person briefed on the situation, declining to identify the company.

H&W’s collapse is a blow to attempts by successive governments, most recently in 2022, to forge a national shipbuilding strategy that would deliver a steady pipeline of work to yards across the country. 

But the Labour government has defended its decision on the loan guarantee, blaming its Conservative predecessors for dragging its feet.

“In some ways, we were lucky that the first big decision we were handed was such an obvious basket case,” said one Labour figure. “There were plenty of red flags around it and it was a clear-cut decision not to go ahead with the loan guarantee.”

Francis Tusa, analyst and editor of the Defence Analysis newsletter, said the shipbuilding strategy had several “disjoints” from the start. Aside from a lack of money, it proved difficult to foster competition while at the same time promising a viable domestic warship industry with work for all yards.

Despite the uncertainty, some workers in Belfast said the mood was “nothing like 2019” when the company previously filed for insolvency.

Apprentice Ethan Baxter, 18, who joined H&W in Belfast three weeks ago was also hopeful. “I have heard there will be new buyers. I’m not worried.”

But unions who occupied the Belfast site for nine weeks in 2019 before its £6mn rescue were concerned their hard-fought victory will have been in vain.

“I was involved in 2019 when we literally just refused to give up — and you know, we would do the same again,” said Susan Fitzgerald, Irish secretary of union Unite, which represents most of the workers in Belfast and Appledore.

“We want to hear that our members’ jobs and skills are safe for the next generation. We don’t want someone coming in squandering that opportunity.”

Navigating choppy waters

1861

Harland and Wolff is founded by Edward Harland and Gustav Wolff in Belfast

1912

The company’s most famous ship, Titanic, sinks on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York

1975

H&W nationalised after decades of decline amid rising competition from Asia

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1989

H&W returns to private ownership in a management buyout backed by Norwegian industrialist Fred Olsen

2003

Anvil Point, the last ship built in Belfast, is launched

2018

Norway’s Dolphin Drilling, formerly known as Fred Olsen Energy, puts H&W up for sale

aug 2019

H&W files for insolvency after Dolphin Drilling files for bankruptcy

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Oct 2019

UK energy infrastructure group InfraStrata, led by John Wood, agrees to buy H&W for £6mn.

2023

H&W is part of consortium led by Spain’s Navantia that is awarded £1.6bn Royal Navy contract to build 3 support ships

Jul 2024

Government rejects £200mn loan backing

Aug 2024

US lender Riverstone agrees emergency £25mn loan. As a condition, Wood departs to be replaced by Russell Downs who disposes of non-core assets

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sep 2024

Company is declared insolvent and administrators appointed