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In the heart of communist China, it is the capitalists who seem to be ruling the roost. A quick stroll down Nanjing Road in Shanghai these days can be a slightly deflating experience – you could be in virtually any city in the West. Almost as far as you look, the street is lined with names that have become global paeans to consumption. Luxury goods addicts seem to have added Shanghai to the list of must-visit cities if the shopping buzz is anything to go by.

A night at Amber Lounge, a nomadic party circuit which travels alongside the teams of Formula One and where tickets sell for €500 a time, confirms that the well-to-do of Shanghai are as self-confident, if perhaps not quite as wealthy, as their counterparts in London, Moscow or New York. The Champagne being sprayed, the jewelery being flaunted and the cash being flashed are every bit as real as those elsewhere.

If all that raw display of money seems incongruous, it's not the only thing in China that feels that way. The business world, like the rest of life, is full of these kinds of jarring anomalies. None were more striking than this week's confession by one of the vice-chairmen of China's banking regulator that Citic Bank, the country's seventh-largest, wanted to buy a stake in Bear Stearns, the Wall Street investment bank. That China might be asked to provide much-needed capital for the restoration of one of the oldest institutions on the street is notable enough. The fact that confirmation of this interest came on the sidelines of the Communist Party's most important event for five years simply reinforced that sense that the financial world, and the wheels that turn it, are being maneuvered in ways which disconcert China and the West in roughly equal measure.

If there's a more fitting owner for a Formula One team than Vijay Mallya, I'd like to see him. Gliding around the Shanghai paddock as if he's been a member of the F1 circus for years, the only surprise about his takeover of the struggling Spyker outfit is that he hasn't yet applied for a licence that would allow him to join in the on-track action.

Owning an F1 team may be hard work, but for a flamboyant entrepreneur dripping in money and bling, it's a pretty satisfying boy's toy. Mr Mallya, who turned Kingfisher into an internationally known brand, certainly looked pleased with himself in Shanghai, though that won't have had much to do with the Spykers' performance.

Buying the team is only the beginning. Mr Mallya will need to fork out a lot more rupees if he's to be as successful in motor racing as he has been in beer and aviation.

Hiring the less successful of the two Schumacher brothers might not be the best way of going about it. On Sunday night, Ralf, younger brother of the multiple-world champion Michael, was spotted in the Ritz-Carlton deep in conversation with Mr Mallya and his advisers.

That's not Mr Mallya's only F1-related preoccupation. He's also involved in efforts to construct a new circuit that would see India added to the F1 calendar in the next couple of years.

The politics are complicated, and the opposition in parts of India is trenchant. But Mr Mallya usually gets what he wants. Getting to the top step of the F1 podium might, however, be his biggest challenge yet.

Formula One hasn't been Asia's only travelling circus during the last couple of weeks; although to be fair, the business delegation accompanying the Lord Mayor of London on his latest trip to the Far East comes garnered with a little less in the way of ego.

John Stuttard, the current incumbent of the Lord Mayor's office, doesn't have long left before he hands over the reins, so clocking up the air miles is logical.

Not that his itinerary in China this time has been all of his own choosing. The small matter of the Chinese Communist Party's quinquennial congress in Beijing rather upset the apple cart in terms of Mr Stuttard's travel plans. Organised almost a year in advance, his schedule was torn up a few weeks back when the date of the congress was announced.

This weekend, he's in South Korea, where HSBC might be grateful to him for lobbying the government over the progress of its proposed acquisition of Korea Exchange Bank, mired in the depths of legal investigation and government bureaucracy.

Then it's back to Hong Kong and on to Beijing – but all the time with one eye on New York. Every Lord Mayor joins battle in the competition to attract overseas companies to London, and this one seems to have enjoyed it.

"Mayor Bloomberg spent $500,000 on a study showing that regulation was the key to New York's loss of competitiveness," Mr Stuttard told British Chamber of Commerce members this week. "If he had taken me out for lunch, I would have told him exactly the same thing, and it would have been a lot cheaper."