WHILE DEBT and taxes continue to smother most aspects of Irish life, business goes on, or at least it does in China.

News came yesterday that Treasury Holdings’ Asian unit, Treasury China Trust, is spending €63.5 million to buy a shopping mall in China’s financial capital, Shanghai.

At the same time, the company is issuing €29.8 million of convertible bonds to fund this and other acquisitions.

The deal will bring TCT’s Shanghai portfolio to to four properties, totalling more than 330,000 square feet of floor space.

On the financial side, it marks TCT’s first move into the convertible bond market, which the company said reflected its “strong prospects”.

It will use the bonds to fund this shopping centre and another, previously announced, deal in Qingdao.

TCT’s Richard David said Shanghai’s Huai Hai Road is “a great location” that attracts “strong demand”, with existing retailers in the area including HM, Zara and Gap.

It all sounds great, especially when it placed against Treasury’s more recent Irish experiences, in which the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) has featured strongly.

Treasury owns 40 per cent of TCT, so a fillip in China should (fingers crossed) provide a fillip here too, at least over the longer term. In the meantime, it’s worth considering comments made on China recently by Treasury co-founder Richard Barrett.

“If you landed from Mars and asked where should you put up a real estate operation, you’d set up here,” he told Clifford Coonan of this newspaper late last year.

Let’s all just hope he’s proven correct.