Four local government employees jump into their minibus, beaming from ear to ear. They have just had a chance meeting with the Communist party secretary of Foshan, a prosperous city of 7m in China’s Guangdong province.

Many Chinese officials long for an op-portunity to salute the local party boss, in whose hands rests the fate of their entire career. What is different about these four is that they are foreigners.

“That was the highlight of the month,” Abbey Heffer, a 23-year-old politics graduate from Exeter University in the UK, says to colleagues Nicolas Santo from Uruguay, Giovanni Lovisetti from Italy and Maria Acastenco from Mexico. They are part of an unusual experiment designed to boost foreign investment in Foshan and help transform it from workmanlike manufacturing hub into an innovative industrial metropolis.