Prince Filip of Belgium is nothing more, nor less, than a gilded flowerpot. He was invited to be present at a CEO breakfast, at the opening of a new production hall, at a seminar on doing business in Shenyang, and at a cocktail reception for visiting Belgian businessmen. Endless speeches follow each other, elucidating nothing in particular, full of stock phrases including a lot of “challenges and opportunities”.
The Prince, he just sat there in his designer suit, not uttering even one word in public. Perhaps that's all for the better, he's not really interested in the places he's visiting anyway and if you ask him next month where he spent two nights, he will probably have forgotten the name of the city. He did give a lecture at the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing – someday when I have nothing much to do, which isn't likely to occur in the next couple of years, I'll google it and have a look – but even on this occasion, the words he uttered are not his, the speech written by ghost writers and vetted by the Belgian government.
Some of the accompanying Belgian businessmen are certainly interested in China and the – erh “challenges and opportunities” – it offers. They can do without the prince. If they have a nice, interesting project and somewhere somehow an important decision is blocked, they'll be able to get to the vice mayor to make their case regardless of the presence of the prince. Others only want to hang around in the vicinity of the prince – never mind the country he's visiting – hoping someday to be granted a royal honor, an officership in the order of Leopold, or even better to be made a Baron. Those “businessmen” are not interested in doing business, they're interested in royalty.
Did the prince do anything worthwhile in Shenyang. The answer is no – he's just a gilded flowerpot...
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