[4] Difficulty with recording arose when Mick Karn had to rub the aluminium neck of his Travis Bean bass guitar quite frantically and the heat generated "was enough to bend the metal out of pitch".
Because of this, the guitar had to be cooled down mid-recording and to get around this problem, Karn switched to a local bass manufacture Wal, "which worked perfectly on the first take".
[1] Steve Jansen recalled that "‘With songs such as ‘Canton’ and ‘Visions of China’ the drums were driving the structuring of the tracks".
[5] The title refers to Guangzhou and is one of the numerous tracks thematically related to China, and Asia in general, in the band's discography.
[6][7][8] Reviewing the single for Record Mirror, Simon Hills wrote "Sounds like the theme music to The Secret Lovers of Chairman Mao", with "more oriental, and totally glib, 'art' on the flip side with 'Visions Of China' in which the group imagine all the royalties they could get by selling a record to the country with the biggest population".