Chinese are coming… but will they know who’s Bono?

The IDA regard it as a coup and every tourism organisation in the country is delighted.

The Chinese — all 1.3bn of them — are being encouraged to holiday in Ireland.

The visit last year by Xi Jinping, now the country’s leader, prompted a Chinese TV firm to make a promotional video about Ireland, a place most people in China had never heard of.

So far, so fantastic.

But, while most of the video is a beautifully produced snapshot of rural Ireland, the TV company’s attempts to focus on our cultural and musical delights have hit a bum note.

On the video, produced by Hunan TV, a satellite broadcaster based in the wealthy province of Hunan on the Yangtze River in south-east China, the producers and editors can’t tell Bono from Nicky Byrne.

A photo of the Cranberries is captioned U2, while a 30-year-old snapshot of a fresh-faced Bono and his boys is named “Westlife”. The video is on Innovation Ireland, IDA Ireland’s YouTube channel and the company responsible for attracting foreign direct investment to Ireland appears to have no intention of removing it.

“We were not any way involved in the production,” said Emmett Oliver, IDA Ireland head of corporate communications. “They came over to do a TV report. They rang us up beforehand and seemed particularly interested in the Shannon Free Zone and in recreating something like that in China.

“We collect any video references to Ireland and put it on our website.

“Most of it was accurate and we are happy with that. It was a bit of a coup to have them do that.”

As reported in yesterday’s Irish Examiner, an estimated 10,000 Chinese visitors come to Ireland each year and Tourism Ireland plans to boost that number considerably and, in particular, woo China’s wealthiest individuals.