“There are some lovely art-deco apartment buildings and beautiful old villas with gardens in the former French colonial area, but the prices are phenomenal now,” Ogilvie says. She is now looking towards cheaper areas within walking distance of the central business district.

It is this expectation that prices will keep on rising, rather than the rental yields themselves, that keeps drawing in buyers. Sooner or later, China will also have to bow to pressure from America and revalue its currency, the renminbi, providing an instant windfall gain for investors.

Anybody hoping for a continuation of the 20%+ annual price rises seen over the past few years will probably be disappointed, though. Worried about a speculative bubble, Chinese authorities are trying to cool things down: the maximum mortgage permitted has been cut from 70% to 60% of value, and a 5% sales tax levied on properties bought and sold within two years.

James Hughes, managing director of City Trading Post, financial advisers in international property, is nevertheless encouraged that the Chinese authorities are trying to prevent things getting out of hand.

“It’s a good idea they are letting some steam out of the pressure cooker,” he said. Although concerned about possible oversupply in some sectors, he is confident overall annual price rises will remain in double digits for several years to come.

Jones, for one, is not too worried about the risk — or the fact his investment is more than 6,000 miles from Britain. “Unless you have got a property across the road from where you live, it doesn’t matter how far away it is,” he says. “There are risks, but you’d have said the same about Spain under Franco in the 1970s. And I bet we all wish we had bought a villa in Spain in the 1970s.”

Additional reporting and research Tom Pattinson

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