Interesting to see that Poland wants to squeeze out more income from its state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector in the face of slowing economic growth and financing pressures.

Warsaw wants to double next year’s dividends from stakes in firms ranging from copper mines to utility providers to banks.

Fellow euro zone aspirant Lithuania has also embarked on reforms aimed at increasing dividends sixfold from what UBS has dubbed “the forgotten side of the government balance sheet”. It wants to emulate countries such as Sweden and Singapore where such companies are managed at arm’s length from the state and run along strict corporate standards to consistently grow profits.

The impetus isn’t entirely ideological. Poland and Lithuania are desperately trying to balance their books and under European Commission rules, privatisation proceeds cannot be taken into account when calculating the budget deficit but SOE dividends can.

But “sweating” government assets to yield higher profits doesn’t always come easy for central and eastern Europe. After all, this is a region where state ownership has been synonymous with inefficiency and stagnation.

Even so, the track record of emerging European governments on privatisation is mixed.

The haste at which state resources were sold off following the collapse of the Soviet Union had disastrous repercussions for economies such as Russia and Croatia. Recent efforts at state divestment from Poland to the Czech Republic to Romania have run aground on unrealistic price expectations, corruption or regulatory obstruction.

I found myself at Selfridges this week, specifically in what the London retailer says is the world’s largest shoe department.

Slightly dazed by cornucopia of women’s shoes on slick display, I was roused only when the haze of muzak wafting over the PA system was suddenly dispersed by the jaunty strains of the Chinese New Year ditty ‘Gongxi Gongxi’.

A 1946 composition from Shanghai, the song has gone from classic to kitsch, evolving to become the most popular festive song in the Chinese-speaking world. Its ubiquity rests on the many — for me at least — teeth-grindingly cloying versions played all over shops and markets in Asia. (Click here for example and don’t say I didn’t warn you)

I was somewhat surprised by the song’s appearance in the British retail icon — not least because it’s still some ways off the Year of the Dragon. But then looking at the shoppers around me it all made sense.

Mainland Chinese travellers spent some £200 million on Bond Street last year. That’s a 155 percent surge from 2009, according to an association of luxury retailers in the London thoroughfare.

Never mind that these products are largely assembled back in their home country, Chinese tourists buy their designer bags on Bond Street and elsewhere in Europe to avoid China’s luxury sales tax. More importantly, these status-conscious buyers have the assurance that they are not being sold knock-offs — a risk rampant in a country notorious for its lack of regard for intellectual property.

Those reasons are similar to those that drive the wealthy elite in many emerging economies to London, a city that Goldman Sach’s Jim O’Neil has dubbed the “BRIC capital of the world“.