On the subject of the EU constitution, he is adamant. "Non! How can we compete with China?" Even in this remote region, every little village has a zone industrielle, an apparently abandoned enclave of prefabricated units in which - were it not for the evil forces of globalization - hundreds of highly productive French workers on 50,000 Euros a year, 35-hour weeks and two months' annual paid holidays would churn out huge quantities of world-beating textiles and electronic goods, leaving Shenzhen's workshops in the manufacturing dust.