"The British gamble is that an open-door policy – when the US and the EU reflexively treat Chinese state investors as a threat – will lead to a reciprocal welcome for British firms in China"

It is a sobering experience to travel through eastern China with a British passport. Again and again you run into historic sites that were burned, shelled or sacked by British forces in the 19th century.

The incidents are described in unflattering detail on Mandarin placards for millions of Chinese national pilgrims, spiced with emotional accounts of the Opium Wars.

The crown jewel of this destructive march was the Summer Palace of the Chinese emperors outside Beijing, looted of its Qing Dynasty treasures by Lord Elgin in 1860, and burned to ground.

It was a reprisal for the murder of 18 envoys by the Chinese court, but the exact "casus belli" hardly matters anymore.

The defilement lives on in the collective Chinese mind as a high crime against the nation, the ultimate symbol of humiliation by the West. The Communist Party has carefully nurtured the grievance under its “patriotic education” drive.

David Marsh, from the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, says Britain’s leaders are implicitly atoning for a colonial past by rolling out the red carpet this week for Chinese President Xi Jinping, and biting their tongue on human rights. They are acknowledging that British officialdom is in no fit position to lecture anybody in Beijing.

The exact line between good manners and kowtowing is hard to define, but George Osborne came close to crossing it on his trade mission to China last month, earning plaudits from the state media for his “pragmatism” and deference.

But as the Chancellor retorted, you have to take risks in foreign policy. Moral infantilism is for the backbenches. “China is what it is,” he said.

David Fuller's view

Here is a PDF of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's article.

The picture at the top of this article – Robbery of the Summer Palace by Sun Tao, speaks volumes in terms of previous attitudes within China towards the UK.  Therefore, I credit George Osborne and David Cameron, and indeed the Queen, for taking a very respectful initiative in presenting today’s UK to China’s leaders.

It would be foolish not to do this, in my opinion.  Moreover, they are following Tim Cook’s enormously successful commercial and diplomatic ventures in China, and also those of many other CEOs from the USA to Germany.