Some commentators hyperventilate about China's huge new embassy, but did you know until last year UK Power Networks, the operator for the electric grid in London and most of Southeast England, was owned by a Hong-Kong company? Xi Jinping thus had the means to plunge the UK's most critical areas into darkness at the stroke of a pen. You can't make incompetence like that up. Fortunately, it's been acquired by French company Engie, so the French had to come and rescue the British (and previously it was owned by the French state-owned utility EDF, ÉlectricitÉ de France).