Little is more symbolic of globalisation than a McDonald’s hamburger. The American fast-food chain opened its first Chinese branch in 1990. The outlet was in Shenzhen, a small town just across the border from Hong Kong, which was home to the country’s original “Special Economic Zone”—an area where the Chinese government could try market liberalisation before rolling it out to the rest of the country. The Big Mac was a little piece of American capitalism in a communist country.